Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

MR. SPEAKER'S ABSENCE

The House being met, the Clerk at the Table informed the House of the unavoidable absence of Mr. SPEAKER.

Whereupon Sir ROBERT GRANT-FERRIS, The CHAIRMAN OF WAYS AND MEANS, proceeded to the Table and, after Prayers, took the Chair as DEPUTY SPEAKER.

Oral Answers to Questions — FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS

European Economic Community

Mr. Raphael Tuck: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will now specify the safeguards which he has been able to obtain from the European Economic Community for Australian and New Zealand trade with the United Kingdom.

The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Sir Alec Douglas-Home): In relation to trade with Australia we have secured explicit recognition by the Community that if circumstances arose during the transitional period in which significant volumes of trade in commodities subject to Community levy systems risked serious disruption the enlarged Community would deal with the position and would likewise take rapid and effective action to deal with any difficulties which might arise in the operation of the transitional mechanisms. The problem of New Zealand's exports remains to be resolved in the negotiations.

Mr. Tuck: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of the recently expressed disquiet in Australia and New Zealand? He continually talks about the transitional period. Where does he expect Australia and New Zealand to sell their goods after the transitional period—to the moon or Mars? These countries fought alongside us in two world wars. Is the right hon. Gentleman now going to throw them gaily to the mercy of the winds? Does not the right hon. Gentleman consider that the Australian or New Zealand wife of long standing will be more faithful to him than the new German or French mistress?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: I need not pursue the latter point very far. We are aware of our obligations to these two faithful allies. I hope that the Australians will be able to export a great deal to an expanding and rich market. If, by any chance, the hon. Gentleman is thinking of sugar, the International Sugar Agreement is to be reviewed in 1973, and Australia is a member and Britain is a member. This comes before the transitional period begins.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: Would not my right hon. Friend agree that Australia asked for no special safeguards at the beginning of the negotiations? With regard to New Zealand, would he not agree that, while it is eminently reasonable that safeguards should be provided, no pattern of trade for any country can be permanently frozen?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: That is so. I do not know what the future would have been even if there had been no Common Market in the picture.

Mr. Healey: Would the Foreign Secretary say whether he has yet reached agreement with the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia on how the matter should be handled in Brussels?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: I have just said how the matter has been handled in Brussels. If there are any further matters that the Australians want us to take up with the Commission or the Community, we shall be only too glad to do so.

Mr. Marten: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth affairs if he will make a statement on the latest position in the negotiations to join the Common Market.

Mr. Blaker: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on the latest position in the negotiations for entry into the European Economic Community.

Mr. Barnes: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a further statement on the progress of the negotiations for Great Britain to join the European Economic Community.

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: I have nothing to add at present to the statements made by my right hon. and learned Friend of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster on 9th June and by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on 10th June. As the House will be aware, my right hon. and learned Friend is about to start a further round of discussions with the members of the Community, and, with Mr. Speaker's permission, will make a further statement on his return.—[Vol. 818, c. 1043–5; c. 1235–7.]

Mr. Marten: Has my right hon. Friend noticed the vote last week in the Norwegian Parliament, where, by only one vote, Norway voted to continue the negotiations, and subsequently resolved unanimously to consider alternative arrangements? In the event of all our three co-applicants not getting into the Common Market, what will be the British position? Shall we be out because of that, or shall we go in and leave them out?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: Britain's concern is with British interests and their protection. My hon. Friend has mentioned the vote in the Norwegian Parliament, which I understand to be largely concerned with fisheries. The situation in Norway is different from that in this country.

Mr. Moyle: Will the right hon. Gentleman ask the Chancellor of the Duchy to ensure that when he makes his statement to the House on the present round of meetings he makes it in English English and not Common Market English, so that we may all know what he has been up to in the last day or two?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: There are various forms of English in different parts of the world, as I have found. I shall ask by right hon. and learned Friend to

make his statement in the English to which the House is accustomed.

Mr. Blaker: Will my right hon. Friend tell the Chancellor of the Duchy that he has conducted the negotiations so far with great skill and that the House wishes him success in this week's meetings?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: I am obliged to my hon. Friend, and so will my right hon. and learned Friend be.

Mr. Farr: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what arrangements have been made for the continued entry of Australian sugar and fruit products to the United Kingdom, in the event of Britain joining the European Economic Community.

The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Anthony Royle): I have nothing to add to the statement made on 17th May by my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and to his answer that day to my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Miss Joan Hall).—[Vol. 817, c. 882–6; c. 859–61.]

Mr. Farr: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply, but will it not be a consequence of our entering the Common Market that all the imports which we take from Australia at present will have a tariff imposed on them, which will not only be bad for Australia but will have a serious reciprocal effect on our exports to that country, which is our third biggest customer now?

Mr. Royle: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has already stressed that Australia's sugar exports will be safeguarded until the International Sugar Agreement is renewed in 1973. The Community has explicitly recognised the risk to trade with third countries through the transitional period and has agreed that it would be the intention of the enlarged Community to take effective measures to avoid any unnecessary disruption.

Sir D. Walker-Smith: Since my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas) has sought to defend the attitude to New Zealand's exports by saying that no trade pattern could be frozen for ever, could my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State explain why we are


seeking admission to the European Economic Community, which has precisely that purpose and effect?

Mr. Royle: There would be continuing developments in trade after we joined the Community, and there would be discussions between ourselves and the Community on measures to avoid unnecessary disruption; this would be achieved by action through the appropriate institutions of an enlarged Community, both at the level of longer-term policy and at the level of day-to-day management.

Mr. W. H. K. Baker: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he expects detailed negotiations with the European Economic Community to commence on fisheries policy within an enlarged Community; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Strang: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he intends to negotiate with the European Economic Community on amendment to the common fisheries policy to safeguard the interests of the British fishing industry.

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: Her Majesty's Government made proposals to the Community for the modification of the common fisheries policy on 1st June. As recorded in his statement of 9th June, these were taken up again on 7th June by my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. The question is being discussed in Luxembourg again this week.—[Vol. 818, c. 1045.]

Mr. Baker: I thank my right hon. Friend for that reply, but does he understand the considerable disquiet which still remains within the inshore fishing industry about the whole of the negotiations, not least because of the fall-back to the six-mile limit before the negotiations took place? Would it not be far more reassuring and more satisfactory if these negotiations were completed before Britain's possible entry into the E.E.C.?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: The answer to the last part of my hon. Friend's question is, "Yes". We must get a satisfactory and fair settlement. The fisheries proposals themselves are proposals by the Commission and, therefore, informal; they have not been adopted one way or

another by the Community. To that extent, therefore, the situation is open for the negotiations on which my right hon. and learned Friend is now engaged.

Mr. Strang: Why were the Government unable to support the Norwegian Government's counter-proposals to the common fisheries policy? Second, could the right hon. Gentleman answer the earlier question, namely, why is the starting point the six-mile limit? Why are we not going into the negotiations at least asking for the 12-mile limit to be retained?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: The Norwegian situation differs from our situation here in that they have complete fishing rights within 12 miles, and we have never had that. We have our own complete rights within six miles, but from six to 12 miles six or seven European countries fish for certain species of fish, and certain conditions are applied. So our situation is not the same as the Norwegian.

Mr. Healey: Have the Government yet been able to make an estimate of the number of British fishermen who would lose as inshore fishermen by opening the waters from six to 12 miles, and of those deep-water fishermen who would gain from exploiting those waters in foreign territories?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: I should like to have notice of that question, if I may. There is no question of opening the six miles to unlimited fishing from abroad. Quite the contrary. The six-mile limit will remain as it is. There may be some more people fishing within six to 12 miles.

Mr. Healey: With respect, I think the right hon. Gentleman misunderstood my question. Have the Government yet made an estimate of the number of British fishermen who would lose as inshore fishermen in British waters as a result of opening the six to 12 miles, and of the number of those who would gain as British fishermen who would fish in deeper waters now closed to them, and will he put these figures in the White Paper if he is not able to give them now?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: I said that I should like notice of that, and I shall see that the figures are included.

Mr. Deakins: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Comonwealth Affairs what further consultations he has had with the European Economic Community about the agreement on sugar from developing Commonwealth countries after 1974, concerning the quantities involved, in view of representations from the Commonwealth countries concerned.

Mr. Anthony Royle: My right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster reported to the House on his most recent discussions with the European Economic Community on sugar from developing Commonwealth countries in his statement on 9th June. The communiqué published in the OFFICIAL REPORT on 9th June represents the official view of the developing member countries of the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement.—[Vol. 818, c. 1043, 1061–2.]

Mr. Deakins: Is it certain that the Six accept and agree with our interpretation of the agreement on Commonwealth sugar?

Mr. Royle: It was arranged at the Lancaster House Conference with the representatives of the Governments of the developing Commonwealth that the communiqué should be presented to the Six at the meeting at Luxembourg. That was done.

Mr. Scott-Hopkins: Does my hon. Friend agree that the communiqué has been written into the report in Luxembourg and is therefore now part of the negotiations and accepted as such? Does he also agree that the Common Market countries are not likely to increase their quota and their manufacture of sugar from beet?

Mr. Royle: It is certainly correct that the communiqué has been written into the record at Luxembourg. The question of beet sugar production in the Community was not affected by the discussions with the developing Commonwealth.

Mr. Moate: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if, as a result of his negotiations, he is now in a position to quantify the dynamic effects on Great Britain's rate of economic growth if Great Britain were to join the European Economic Community.

Mr. Anthony Royle: There are many difficulties in making an overall estimate in quantitative terms, but we are confident that the beneficial effect of entry in industry, in terms of levels of productivity and industrial investment, would be substantial.

Mr. Moate: Does my hon. Friend agree that the German rate of growth dropped after the formation of the European Economic Community? Is that the sort of dynamic effect he would expect for this country?

Mr. Royle: If my hon. Friend looks at the record of the countries in the Community over the past few years he will see that their growth has been considerably in excess of this country's.

Mr. Edwin Wainwright: Does the Minister agree that the economic situation 12 months ago was better than it is today, and that whether we enter the E.E.C. or stay out, it is time that the rate of growth of this nation was increased? Otherwise, the party opposite may as well not bother being the Government of this country.

Mr. Royle: I am interested to hear the hon. Gentleman's comments. I agree with him that if we join the European Economic Community growth will come to this country.

Mr. Ridsdale: Is it not a fact that Lord Stokes has advertised fairly freely that there would be a certain amount of growth in the motor car industry if we entered the Common Market?

Mr. Royle: I should have thought that Lord Stokes's comment on behalf of the motor industry would be greeted with pleasure by right hon. and hon. Members on both sides.

Mr. Jay: If the Minister does not know what the economic consequences of joining the E.E.C. will be, why does he go around saying how wonderful they will be?

Mr. Royle: I think the right hon. Gentleman, I am sure quite unwittingly, is not playing quite fair with the House. I did not say—and I think that he knows this—that I did not know what the economic benefits might be. All I have said is that it is not possible to prove that entry will produce particular results. This is different from what might be expected.

Mr. Tilney: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether, in the discussions on the terms of entry for Great Britain into the Common Market, the possibility of New Zealand either joining the Common Market herself or federating with Great Britain was raised.

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: These matters have not been raised in the present negotiations, nor have they been raised by New Zealand with us.

Mr. Tilney: But since New Zealand is part of British and European civilisation, and since in terms of transport Wellington is nearer London than Edinburgh was at the time of Union, could not arrangements be made in the future for New Zealand, if she so wishes, to join the E.E.C., especially as in 10 years' time an over-populated Europe may be in need of cheap New Zealand food?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: The New Zealand Government must have thought of this. If they want to make any approaches in the future, of course they would be considered.

Mr. Molloy: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that very many people in this country share the apprehensions of the New Zealanders about the grave situation they would be in if the present Parliament pitchforked this country into the E.E.C., and that many people believe that in the event of that calamity the latter part of the right hon. Gentleman's title, "Commonwealth Affairs", would become defunct? Many people do not wish that to happen.

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: The hon. Gentleman is expecting calamity. I am not inclined to do that.

Mr. Fell: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what further consultations he has now had with the Foreign Minister of Norway concerning the effect upon the respective countries' fishing fleets of their applications to join the European Economic Community.

Mr. Body: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether he will make a statement

on the official visit of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster to Norway.

Mr. Anthony Royle: I would refer to the answer I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall) on 8th June.—[Vol. 818, c. 317.]

Mr. Fell: Is my hon. Friend aware that the House, or some hon. Members, should be extremely grateful to our right hon. Friend the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary who, in answer to supplementary questions on Questions 6 and 19, used the words, "The six-mile limit will remain the same"? We presume that that means "on accession". If that is true, instead of people saying "Promises, promises" to the Government about what will happen if we enter the E.E.C., they will be able to say, "We are now getting firm promises from top members of the Cabinet." Is it, in fact, a firm commitment? Only a few days ago my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food said that the Government had proposed that exclusive rights within the six-mile limit should be granted to British ships. Which is true? If this is a promise, that is marvellous, and the fishing industries in this country will be very pleased. But is it?

Mr. Royle: My hon. Friend is not being entirely fair. He must accept that my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is now engaged in key negotiations in Luxembourg. I am certain that my hon. Friend, like right hon. and hon. Members on both sides, hopes that the negotiations will produce the safeguards we need for the British fishing industry. What we have asked for is a categoric statement that the present common fisheries policy would be modified after enlargement to meet the circumstances and the needs of a Community of ten. I think that on reflection my hon. Friend will agree that it is best to let my right hon. and learned Friend get on with the job of negotiating.

Mr. McNamara: Is the Minister aware that the reply he has just given is in complete contradiction to the reply of the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary a few minutes earlier, when he categorically stated that we would maintain the six-mile limit? Had it been my good fortune to catch the eye of the Chair, I would have asked whether that was merely for


the transitional period or for perpetuity, because this matter is of great importance to the inshore fishing community. To revert to the question under discussion—[HON. MEMBERS: "Too long!"]—it has been said that if they enter the E.E.C. the Norwegians are prepared to surrender those rights they are now demanding for themselves on maintaining the 12-mile limit and that they will go back upon the pledge they have already made that they will ban trawling within that 12-mile limit. If that is so, is not the offer being made to the British deep-sea fleet—

Hon. Members: Too long!

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman should be as short as possible.

Mr. McNamara: With the greatest respect, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I am trying to be, but I am being interrupted by hon. Members opposite. These points are of interest to those of us who represent fishing constituencies, and they need further enlargement than we have had from the Government. The point I was trying to make was this—

Hon. Members: Too long!

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I must ask the hon. Gentleman to conclude his question in one sentence, quickly.

Mr. McNamara: Does it not mean that the benefits offered to the deep-sea fleet of being able to fish within the 12-mile Norwegian limit will not exist?

Sir G. Nabarro: Garrulous old windbag.

Mr. Royle: The six-mile proposal is on the table for the discussions in Luxembourg this week. We are, of course, aware of the Norwegian proposals and have been studying them closely. The problems faced by the two countries are by no means identical but we shall continue to consult the Norwegian Government closely, particularly on matters of common interest.

Mr. Mather: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs to what extent amendment to the Treaty of Rome is now considered necessary by Her Majesty's Government.

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: Her Majesty's Government accept the Treaty of Rome and the decisions flowing from it, subject to the agreements reached and to be

reached in the negotiations. On enlargement of the Community, the Treaty of Rome needs certain technical amendments necessary to provide for the additional membership.

Mr. Mather: I thank my right hon. Friend for that reply. As the full implications, if Britain is to join, cannot clearly be foreseen, will he press for an amendment to Article 240 of the Treaty of Rome to limit the binding effects which may arise for us as a result of the passage of time and to protect our overriding national interest?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: Where matters of over-riding national interest are concerned, we have made it plain—as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister did in his talks with President Pompidou—that decisions should be reached by unanimity. This, I think, is the big protection against any vital interest of a member country being overridden.

Mr. Heffer: Is it not clear that the harmonisation programme, particularly in relation to taxation, means that this country will have to accept the value-added tax and that even if we dislike that tax and we have a Labour Government, we cannot, if we are in the Common Market, get rid of it because of the harmonisation programme?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: That would be for the Labour Government to decide, if there ever is a Labour Government again.

Mr. Trew: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether he will ensure that the White Paper on the terms for entry into the European Economic Community refers specifically to the degree of Great Britain's commitment to initiatives for closer co-operation which go beyond the scope of the Treaty of Rome.

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: I would ask my hon. Friend to await the White Paper that we are about to issue.

Mr. Trew: Does not my right hon. Friend agree that there are initiatives under way in Europe in respect of economic, monetary and political union which could have no less profound an effect on the future of this country than the Treaty of Rome itself? Will he ensure that these matters, particularly the


question of our commitments to them, are dealt with as clearly and as specifically as possible in the White Paper?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: Yes, Sir. It is intended that the White Paper should be as comprehensive as possible so as to give the House and the country all the information we have.

Mr. Molloy: Reference has been made to the West German growth rate. Will the White Paper say whether the effects on the British economy of joining the E.E.C. would be as dynamic as the effects of membership on the Italian economy?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: The hon. Gentleman will be able to make all the necessary comparisons, including the one he has mentioned.

Mr. Scott-Hopkins: Does not my right hon. Friend agree that any further initiative in the political, monetary or defence sectors would be the subject of separate negotiations after our entry into the Community?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: Questions relating to sterling are to be taken outside the context of the present negotiations. The only commitment which the E.E.C. has undertaken in regard to financial matters is that there will be discussion to see how far economic and financial cooperation can be taken. So these will be outside the negotiations.

Mr. Shore: I do not think the right hon. Gentleman has quite got the point. There really is rather more agreement amongst the Six than just a kind of loose decision to make progress with economic and monetary union. Is he not aware that there is a substantial body of Community policy in the form of regulations and other directives which need to be published and made available to the House not later than the time that he introduces his proposed White Paper?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: Yes, Sir; but that was not the question I was asked. I was asked about economic discussions, which go beyond the scope of the present negotiations.

Mr. Lane: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether he now expects to be able to publish a White Paper on the

Common Market negotiations before mid-July.

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: I would refer my hon. Friend to the statement by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on 17th June.—[Vol. 819, c. 643–5.]

Mr. Lane: If things go well in Luxembourg this week, as many of us hope, and if the Government then decide to recommend British entry, will my right hon. Friend ensure that the White Paper devotes plenty of space to the alternatives and makes clear that no practical alternative will offer such good prospects, both economic and political, as membership of an enlarged Community?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: I have never made it a secret that I cannot see an alternative which would offer as good a prospect for this country as joining the E.E.C.

Miss Lestor: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what progress has been made on discussions involving the acceptability of overseas workers in this country as Community workers within the European Economic Community in the event of Great Britain joining.

Mr. Anthony Royle: We are clarifying in discussions with the Community the definition of British national for the purposes of the provisions of the European Economic Community on freedom of movement of labour. Its reactions to our proposals are awaited.

Miss Lestor: Bearing in mind that that answer is similar to the answer that we have been receiving during the last year from the Prime Minister, and the Home Secretary during the passage of the Commonwealth Immigrants Bill, may I ask the hon. Gentleman to confirm one thing; namely, that Commonwealth and other workers from overseas in this country who are citizens of this country will be acceptable as Community workers and that those who are eligible to take up citizenship if they wish to be accepted as Community workers would be well advised to do so?

Mr. Royle: I never like to disappoint the hon. Lady, and I am sorry that I should have disappointed her this afternoon. The facts are that we are awaiting the details of our proposals to be agreed with the Community, and until these are


agreed, until we know the final decision on the question of nationality, it is impossible to give the hon. Lady an accurate answer, and I know she would not want an inaccurate answer.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: Surely the position is that if we join the Community anyone who is a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies and resident in this country will be able to work in the Community. As for those who are resident but not citizens, has not the Community pursued a very liberal policy with regard to labour from countries outside the Community?

Mr. Royle: There will be free movement of labour between the various nationals of the six countries. The position of Commonwealth workers in this country will depend upon their nationality in relation to the definition of British nationality to be agreed with the Community for the purpose of free movement of labour.

Mr. Elystan Morgan: Is it not a fact that the Government are considering restricting the free flow of Community workers into Northern Ireland on account of the economic situation there? If this is so, will the same concessions be considered for areas such as Wales and Scotland, which are likewise afflicted by unemployment?

Mr. Royle: No decision has been taken regarding the movement of labour between Northern and Southern Ireland. This is something yet to be discussed in Brussels.

Mr. Jay: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what forms of information relating to the British entry into the European Economic Community, other than fact-sheets issued through the Post Office Corporation, he intends to spend public money in the present financial year.

Mr. Anthony Royle: No decisions have at present been taken to incur expenditure on forms of information relating to this subject, other than the factsheets to which the right hon. Gentleman refers and means of publicising their availability.

Mr. Jay: Does the hon. Gentleman understand that it is improper to use public money for partisan propaganda?

Can he give a categoric assurance that the Foreign Office is not using for this purpose moneys which have been voted by this House for other purposes?

Mr. Royle: As to the latter half of the right hon. Gentleman's question the answer is "No, Sir". On the earlier part—

Mr. Jay: I think the Minister has said what he did not mean. I asked him whether he could give an assurance that this was not being done.

Mr. Royle: What I am saying is that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is not using funds in the way suggested. I can give the right hon. Gentleman the assurance he asks for in the latter part of his question. As to the earlier part, I would reiterate what has been said to the House, that the fact-sheets simply put into convenient form the information for which the public is asking. It is inconsistent to complain about the fact-sheets and at the same time to complain that the public are being kept in the dark about the issues.

Mr. Kenneth Clarke: asked the Secretary of Slate for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what subjects are to be raised at the next session of negotiating talks between the representatives of the United Kingdom Government and the European Economic Community in Brussels; and whether he will make a statement.

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: The agenda for the next Ministerial meeting, which begins later this evening, will not be finalised until immediately before the meeting.

Mr. Clarke: Would my right hon. Friend confirm that the negotiations currently being carried out about New Zealand, although highly important, deal only with the very narrow commercial problem of butter exports to this country and that nothing is being contemplated which would oblige this country to sever its trading links with New Zealand or which would threaten the deep emotional and cultural ties between the two countries, as some anti-European pressure groups are trying to tell the public?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: Our purpose in the negotiations in the next few days will be to get a fair solution to


the New Zealand problem acceptable to everyone, including New Zealand.

Mrs. Hart: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether the present negotiations, before the publication of the White Paper, will cover the main issues affecting our relations with the developing countries? Can he say whether the negotiations and the White Paper will cover the kind of commodity agreements that we are likely to have with countries depending upon us so much for their trade? Can he also say what form of association is likely to be entered into with those countries which have been offered it and whether it will be in precisely the same form of association as for the Yaoundé countries?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: I have noted the two points made by the right hon. Lady and I see no reason why they should not be in the White Paper. We will try to include as much information as possible on these points if that is the desire of the Opposition.

Sir R. Turton: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will define the extent to which he has agreed, during the recent negotiations with the European Economic Community, to adopt the system of community preferences during the transitional period; and what exceptions to the community preference rule it has been agreed will be permitted to continue after the end of the transitional period.

Mr. Anthony Royle: I would refer my right hon. Friend to the statement by my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster on 17th May. Apart from the separate issue of sugar, none of the arrangements so far agreed with the Community extends beyond the end of the five-year transitional period.—[Vol. 817, c. 883–4.]

Sir R. Turton: That is not a reply to my Question. Is not our correct stand against raising tariff barriers against non-applicant E.F.T.A. countries such as Sweden, Austria and Switzerland an exemption from the Community preference rule? Why do we not make a similar stand against erecting new barriers against our Commonwealth partners?

Mr. Royle: I think my right hon. Friend is aware that our E.F.T.A. partners are completely satisfied with the way in which we have conducted the negotiations and our attitude to Community preference. I am sure that right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House will remember that this was said when my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster attended the E.F.T.A. meeting at Reykjavik last month. On the question of Commonwealth countries, our approach has been not to seek detailed plans in advance to cover all possible contingencies, which would be impossible and, moreover, out of line with the general basis on which the negotiations are being conducted, but to seek from the Community an unequivocal declaration of principle and to make effective and flexible arrangements for implementing it.

Mr. Maclennan: In the absence of an agreed Community policy on sheep, will the importation of sheep products from New Zealand be unaffected by the negotiations save for the common external tariff? Also, are the special interests of the hill farming industry in this country being protected in the current negotiations?

Mr. Royle: We understand that the Community has no intention of going ahead with a sheep meat regulation. It is our intention to do all we can to safeguard the position of the hill farmers.

Mr. Kenneth Clarke: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs at what stage during the transitional period following Great Britain's entry into the European Economic Community the United Kingdom Government will begin to participate in the work of administering the European Development Fund.

The Minister for Overseas Development (Mr. Richard Wood): Negotiations should begin in 1973 on arrangements to succeed the present Yaoundé Convention. These would, no doubt, include such a Fund, which would come into being early in 1975. If Britain is then a member of the Community, we should expect to take part in these negotiations and subsequently in the administration of any such Fund.

Mr. Clarke: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that every under-developed Commonwealth country offered associated status on the Yaoundé Convention model can look forward to receiving substantial aid from the next European Development Fund once Britain has become a member of the Common Market, which could be of great advantage to the economies of the British Caribbean countries, Commonwealth African countries and our smaller dependencies?

Mr. Wood: I agree with my hon. Friend.

Mrs. Hart: Does the right hon. Gentleman propose to increase the aid budget to take account of our contribution to the E.D.F. or will the contribution, which is likely to be substantial, be subtracted from the aid budget? If the latter, is the right hon. Gentleman aware that it will have considerable effect on our present aid levels to Commonwealth countries in Asia?

Mr. Wood: I have already made clear that the British contribution to the fourth European Development Fund will fall within the levels of the aid programme, which will be determined in advance in the course of the annual review of public expenditure.

Sierre Leone

Mr. Soref: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether he will seek to pay an official visit to Sierra Leone.

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: I have no plans at present to do so.

Mr. Soref: My right hon. Friend will be aware that in this Commonwealth country, for the first time, there has been an invasion from the alien and Communist State of Guinea, that distinguished citizens of Sierra Leone have been thrust into gaol without trial and that the country is in the hands of an army from an invading country, whereas the police and the army in Sierra Leone have had their ammunition removed and are at the mercy of these foreign invaders. Has any move been made to protest against this enormity?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: Sierra Leone is an independent country. If there are any questions affecting a British citizen,

these will be matters for my Department and for myself, and at any time we would inquire into the position of any British citizen in difficulties in Sierra Leone.

Mr. Whitehead: I appreciate what the Foreign Secretary has said, but could he use his good offices with the Government of Sierra Leone at least to secure the release pending trial of Brigadier John Bangura, the head of Sierra Leone's military forces, whom all of us who have had the honour of serving with those forces know to be an officer of the highest integrity?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: If the hon. Gentleman will get in touch with me, of course we would always be glad to make representations on humanitarian grounds.

World Health Organisation (Resolution)

Mr. Clinton Davis: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs why Her Majesty's Government's representative at the annual assembly of the World Health Organisation at Geneva in May, 1971, did not vote against a resolution proposed by Afghanistan,inter alia, alleging that Israel had prevented the Red Cross from distributing supplies to the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, the Sinai area and Jordan.

The Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Joseph Godber): The paragraphs to which the hon. Member's Question refer were part of a long draft resolution on health assistance to refugees in the Middle East. It was not possible on this occasion to vote on individual paragraphs of the resolution, which differed widely in content, and the delegation was, therefore, instructed to abstain on the resolution as a whole.

Mr. Davis: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that on 19th May the International Committee of the Red Cross made a statement in which it said that it was untrue that it had been barred from distribution work by the Israeli Government? Was not the resolution, therefore, based on a lie, and in these circumstances should not Her Majesty's Government have voted against it?

Mr. Godber: As I said, there were very different matters in the resolution,


against some of which, I think, the hon. Gentleman would not have wished to vote; but it was difficult, because of the complicated nature of the resolution, and I am glad that his Question has given me an opportunity to make clear that we deplore the use of these specialised agencies for this type of resolution. We should have voted against it if the item had stood on its own.

Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg: Could my right hon. Friend attempt to persuade the United Nations to alter its system so that resolutions are capable of amendment and are not composited like most Labour Party resolutions?

Mr. Godber: I should not wish to comment on the last part of what my hon. Friend said. As regards the earlier part, United Nations resolutions become extremely complicated, often as a result of a great deal of discussion behind the scenes, and I should be a brave man if I thought I could alter that system merely by a proposal to the United Nations.

Mr. Paget: Is not the right hon. Gentleman aware that United Nations resolutions, whether composited or not, are concerned no longer with fact but only with political colour?

Mr. Godber: I note the hon. and learned Gentleman's comments with interest, but I should not wish to carry that matter further.

Rhodesia

Mr. Biggs-Davison: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether he will propose to Mr. Ian Smith that the servicing of Rhodesian loans be resumed in the interests of British bondholders, including chanties, and that dealings in Rhodesian securities be permitted.

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: It would be premature to raise this matter whilst we are still seeking to ascertain whether an acceptable basis for negotiations exists.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: While congratulating my right hon. Friend on renewing exchanges with the Rhodesian Government, may I ask him whether he will reconsider his answer? Would it not be helpful to future negotiations and not weaken the Government's hand to relieve

the innocent victims of sanctions on both sides? Will Lord Goodman be taking this up?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: This would have to be part of a comprehensive settlement. That is the context in which I want to deal with it and not in a piecemeal way.

Mr. Healey: I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his robust answer to the absurd suggestion put by the hon. Member for Chigwell (Mr. Biggs-Davison). Is it not the case that sanctions are biting particularly on British holders of Rhodesian bonds and that it would be absurd to weaken the Government's position on this matter just at the moment when negotiations are in prospect? Will the right hon. Gentleman make a statement about Lord Goodman's recent official mission to Rhodesia?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: The right hon. Gentleman's congratulations are the only thing which make me wonder whether I might be wrong. I will, of course, make a statement if there is anything of substance to report, but I am not anxious to make a statement when there is not anything of substance to report.

Portugal

Mr. Judd: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether he will publish as a White Paper details of his recent bilateral talks with the Portuguese Government.

Mr. Wall: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on his visit to Portugal.

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: I had a useful exchange of views with the Portuguese Foreign Minister over the many matters of common interest to our two Governments. The details of the discussions must, as is customary, remain confidential.

Mr. Judd: Does the right hon. Gentleman recognise that there is widespread concern, both in this House and in the country, that he went to Portugal at all because of the propaganda advantage he put at the disposal of the régime there? Did he take every possible opportunity


to make plain to the Portuguese Government that the British Government find it intolerable that Portugal should deliberately sabotage the collective international action against the illegal régime in Rhodesia and that it should use, directly or indirectly, N.A.T.O. facilities in support of its colonial wars of repression in Africa?

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: I recall that exactly the same thing was being said by hon. Members opposite when I went to Portugal 10 years ago. They said then that it would be a disaster. In neither case has it turned out to be so. On the contrary, we arrived at a considerable degree of understanding with our N.A.T.O. ally but I made plain that our African policies were different. That difference does not, I am happy to say, disturb friendship between Portugal and this country.

Mr. Foley: Did the Portuguese Government inform the right hon. Gentleman that they were about to reopen their consulate in Salisbury? If they did, did he have any reaction? If they did not, what protests has he made since?

Sir Alec Douglas - Home: The Portuguese Foreign Minister informed me, but Portugal does not recognise the Rhodesian Government.

Soviet Union (Treatment of Jews)

Mr. Greville Janner: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether, in view of the further and recent trials of Jews in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics arising from their desire to leave that country for Israel in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to which the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is a party, he will now make further representations to the Soviet Government in connection therewith.

Mr. Godber: The Soviet Government did not support the Universal Declaration of Human Rights when it was adopted in 1948: the Declaration is, therefore, not the best basis for an approach to the Soviet Government on this matter. However, the Soviet Government are well aware of our views, which were repeated by the British

delegate to the Commission on Human Rights at Geneva in March of this year.

Mr. Janner: While I readily appreciate the right hon. Member's views, may I ask whether he is aware that the series of show trials unfortunately continue this week with the trial of a woman called Miss Raiza Palatnik? Can he not find it possible to make some representation to the Soviet authorities, asking that independent observers or the foreign Press be admitted to these trials so that Soviet justice will not continue to be brought into constant disrepute?

Mr. Godber: I recognise the feelings on this matter, and it is one to which my right hon. Friend and I have given a great deal of thought. The hon. Member will recognise that we have no standing through which we can make an official intervention. This has not prevented us from making representations, as my right hon. Friend did with Mr. Gromyko when he was here and as the Permanent Under-Secretary did with the Soviet Ambassador. It is certainly a matter about which we are gravely concerned. The trouble is knowing in what way we can do anything to help. I think our attitude is well known to the Soviet Union.

Mr. Gorst: Would my right hon. Friend give an undertaking that should there be any inhuman or outlandish sentences in future trials of Jewish people wishing to leave the Soviet Union, the most vigorous protest will be made by the Government in view of our support for the Declaration of Human Rights?

Mr. Godber: Yes, Sir. Anything of that kind would be looked at and considered in the light of such sentences as are imposed. It is our desire to help but we do not always help by making official protests. We have to try to find the best ways of seeking to influence the situation.

South Africa (Arms Supplies)

Mr. William Hamilton: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what further requests have been made for armaments by the South African Government.

Mr. Wall: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what recent communications he


has received from the South African Government on the future supply of maritime arms for the defence of the Cape route.

Mr. Godber: The South African Government have informed us of their general requirements for re-equipment. They have placed no new orders with the United Kingdom, and Her Majesty's Government have entered into no further commitments.

Mr. Hamilton: Can the right hon. Gentleman go further and say that within-the terms of the White Paper on the Simonstown Agreement the Government have no legal right, certainly no moral right, to enter into any further discussions about sales of armaments other than the helicopters mentioned in the White Paper? Will he give an undertaking that if the Government should be so ill-advised as to enter into discussions on sales they will notify this House beforehand?

Mr. Godber: We discussed this exhaustively during the White Paper debate and I do not think I can add anything to what was said then. The legal position is spelt out there in great detail, and my right hon. Friend and I have explained precisely what the position is. There has been no change in the situation.

Mr. Healey: Can the right hon Gentleman tell the House when the Government propose to announce a decision on the list of requirements they have received from the South African Government? Secondly, can he tell the House whether Mr. Botha, during his recent visit, pursued the inquiries already made by the South African High Commissioner regarding the possible supply of frigates from this country for the South African Government?

Mr. Godber: I can add nothing to what I have told the House in that there are no orders before us at present. If any orders are put forward, then obviously we shall be considering export licences and that would be the occasion on which we would notify the House.

Mr. Healey: Will the right hon. Gentleman answer the second part of my supplementary question; namely, whether Mr. Botha pursued the inquiries already made by the South African High Com

missioner about supplying frigates from this country and what reply was made by Her Majesty's Government?

Mr. Godber: I was going on to answer the second part, but the right hon. Gentleman rose so hurriedly that I thought he wished to interrupt me on the first part. It is not customary to disclose what happened in confidential discussions and, therefore, I cannot comment on the visit of Mr. Botha. I have said that if orders were placed the House would be informed. That remains the position.

British Council (Chairmanship)

Mr. Edelman: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what names, other than that of Sir Leslie Rowan, were submitted for his approval as potential chairmen of the British Council; whether the appointment was advertised for public competition; and what were the entertainment and travelling expenses of the previous chairman in his last year of office.

Mr. Godber: It would not be right for me to disclose information relating to the confidential proceedings of the governing body of the British Council. No question of advertising arose. There is nothing unusual in a committee appointing its own chairman, but I am advised that a large number of names were considered before a choice was made. The expenses of the previous chairman in his last year of office amounted to £2,399.

Mr. Edelman: In exercising this important piece of patronage, will the right hon. Gentleman cast his net more widely in future? Is it not a fact that, because of the most senior professional direction of the British Council in the past, contact with popular and trade union movements abroad has been negligible? In those circumstances, will the right hon. Gentleman open these appointments to much wider competition and ensure that they are made not in secret but in public?

Mr. Godber: I cannot accept the hon. Gentleman's strictures. The British Council has done a great deal of good work and deserves support. I should have thought that the appointment of someone like Sir Leslie Rowan would have increased confidence, if that was necessary, in the Council's work.

Sir J. Rodgers: As one who has served on the executive of the British Council and who admires its work greatly, I sympathise with the view of the hon. Member for Coventry, North (Mr. Edelman) that the appointment of the chief executive should be open to wider competition. While I have great admiration for Sir Leslie Rowan—and he might well have obtained the job in open competition—it would be better if in future the appointment were open to the greatest possible number of applicants.

Mr. Godber: I note what my hon. Friend says, and I remind him that I said that a large number of names were considered. I will consider the points which have been made, but I think that the matter is best left as it is.

Mr. Healey: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman to give serious consideration to this matter? Many of us know Sir Leslie Rowan and of his work as a Treasury knight and head of Vickers, but we feel that there must have been some other person who was better qualified to promote British civilisation and culture overseas. To deal with the matter in this hole-and-corner way is not entirely satisfactory.

Mr. Godber: I do not accept that the matter was dealt with in a hole-and-corner way. It was also the way in which the appointment had been made under previous Administrations. However, I am willing to look at the matter again and to consult the British Council about it. I should not have thought there was a case for saying that the appointment had been made in a hole-and-corner way. I deplore language of that kind.

Mr. William Hamilton: Does the right hon. Gentleman recognise that there was a unanimous decision by the all-party Expenditure Committee that these appointments were made on the principle of the "old boy network" and that unless he is more forthcoming he will hear a lot more about this kind of thing?

Mr. Godber: I note what the hon. Gentleman says. I have also noted what the Expenditure Committee said about the British Council, and we are considering it. However, I should not have thought that this was an issue on which the House needed to raise a great deal of alarm. A large number of names were considered;

it was nothing like a hole-and-corner procedure.

Mr. Longden: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. As a Vice-Chairman of the British Council, I should have appreciated an opportunity to defend it.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: It is very difficult to satisfy all those who have splendid claims to speak. I must ask for the hon. Gentleman's indulgence.

India Aid Consortium

Mrs. Hart: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on the meeting of the India Aid Consortium on 19th June

Mr. Wood: Donors were asked to pledge their new aid commitments for the present year. Britain promised £54·5 millions.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs will make a statement very soon about assistance to India for the relief of refugees from East Pakistan. This is not a matter that concerns only the consortium countries, but it was generally agreed by them that their contribution to this relief would be additional to normal development assistance.

Mrs. Hart: I very much welcome that statement and look forward to the further statement which we can expect to be made, but does the right hon. Gentleman agree, as most hon. Members would agree, that probably even more important than our relief efforts and assistance to India for aid and relief is a political settlement which is genuine enough to enable the refugees to return to East Pakistan?

Mr. Wood: My right hon. Friend and I have repeatedly stressed that in past debates. I entirely agree with the right hon. Lady.

Mr. Braine: Does my right hon. Friend recall the anxieties the Foreign Secretary expressed a short time ago about a new disaster threatening in East Pakistan; namely, famine and presumably its spilling over the border into East Bengal? Can he say whether the Indian and Pakistan consortia are addressing themselves to this problem and the need for contingency planning now?

Mr. Wood: On the question about the Indian and Pakistan consortia, as my hon. Friend knows the members of the Pakistan consortium are now meeting, and the problem he mentioned will, no doubt, be part of the substance of what my right hon. Friend will tell the House very soon.

SAILING ACCIDENT (PLYMOUTH—FOWEY RACE)

Dame Joan Vickers (by Private Notice): Dame Joan Vickers (by Private Notice) asked the Minister of State for Defence whether he will make a statement in regard to the accident in connection with the Royal Navy Open Sailing Boats Race which sailed from Plymouth on Friday, June 18th.

The Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Royal Navy (Mr. Peter Kirk): The House will already know of the sailing accident which occurred during the Plymouth to Fowey Race last Friday which resulted in the tragic death of two young naval ratings. Also three Officers and 16 ratings were admitted to hospital. All but five have now been discharged and the condition of the remainder is satisfactory.
The circumstances were as follows. The race is traditionally held at this time of the year to coincide with the Fowey Yacht Club Regatta. It is organised and conducted by the Royal Navy to give naval personnel experience in sailing and the opportunity to meet local people on a sporting occasion. Civilian maritime organisations also take part.
Having taken account of the weather forecast for the Plymouth area and conditions prevailing on Friday morning it was judged safe for the race to begin at 10 a.m. Some 40 boats took part. They were escorted by eight vessels all equipped with radio, some of which were in communication with the Flag Officer Plymouth's Headquarters.
Unfortunately, when the race was well under way the weather rapidly deteriorated into Force 6 to 7 gale conditions. The Escort Commander took action to round up competitors, who were by this time widely dispersed, and to bring them back to harbour. The escort force was augmented by a further eight naval ships, the Plymouth and Fowey lifeboats and R.N. and R.A.F. aircraft. The race was

formally cancelled at 1.30 p.m. Unfortunately, two of the whalers participating capsized and four of the craft in the race went ashore along the coast at Whitesand Bay. The remainder put into Fowey Looe or returned safely to Plymouth. All craft were accounted for by evening but the search went on until dusk to ensure that there were no other unreported casualties in the area.
I would like to pay tribute to all those who responded so magnificently to the emergency including the Search and Rescue Services, the Coastguard, the police and the ambulances and, in particular, the Harbour Master at Looe. Our thanks are due to them all.
A Board of Inquiry has been convened to look into the incident and I will undertake to inform the House of its findings.
I am sure that the House will wish to add their sympathy to that which has already been expressed personally on behalf of the Royal Navy by its representatives to the parents and relatives of the two young men who died.

Dame Joan Vickers: While thanking my hon. Friend for that reply, I, too, would like to join with him in expressing sympathy to the parents of the two young men who lost their lives. I personally visited all those in hospital and I found them all in excellent form. I should like to take this opportunity of wishing them success in their future careers. I should like also to join in the expression of praise to all those who helped in the rescue operations, particularly the civilians of Smeeton, Down-derry and Looe, who were on the spot at once and gave excellent help. Perhaps special mention should be made of the W.R.N.S., who not only sailed in their own boats, but also in the rescue boats and were most helpful. This race, as my hon. Friend has mentioned, has been going on for 20 years and I think this is the first accident that has happened. I would hope that this race will be able to continue in future because it is very beneficial for those in the Navy.

Mr. Tom King: May I associate myself with the expressions of sympathy, particularly in relation to the 16-year-old boy who was a constituent of mine? May I ask the Minister whether the inquiry, which will rightly concern itself with points about the weather forecasts,


will pay attention to whether it is really desirable that such young and inexperienced sailors—I understand that a number of them had less than four weeks in the Service—should be engaged in quite such an enterprising venture as this race presents? May I also ask whether my hon. Friend is aware that in one sense part of the inquiry has already been conducted, since, as many hon. Members may have seen, there have been bedside interviews on television, which have raised conflicting evidence which, I would have thought, could be a great embarrassment in this case? Will my hon. Friend consider whether such a practice is really desirable in such a situation?

Mr. Kirk: As to the first point, the inquiry will consider all aspects of this race. I think it fair to point out that adventurous training is part of the Royal Navy's tradition—a rather important part—and the fact that this tragic accident which has occured is, as my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dame Joan Vickers) has pointed out, the first in 20 years, should help us not to lose a sense of proportion about it. On the second point, the inquiry is being conducted by three very experienced naval officers and I am quite certain that they are quite capable of discounting anything they may have seen on television.

Mr. Foley: May I on behalf of my right hon. and hon. Friends associate this side of the House with the expressions of sympathy with the parents and relatives of those who were lost? May I draw attention to two matters which I hope the inquiry will take up? Firstly, what advice in terms of meteorological conditions was sought and given in advance of the race? Secondly there is the matter of the procedures adopted in terms of rounding up all the ships concerned. We look forward to a full report of the inquiry and its being made public.

Mr. Kirk: I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I am quite certain that both those points will be dealt with, and I will make, as I promised, a further statement to the House about the findings of the inquiry.

Captain W. Elliot: Will my hon. Friend bear in mind that, whereas of course one greatly regrets this tragic loss

of life, there is in naval training an element of risk, sometimes a very great element of risk, and that the record of this race over the last 20 years has been very good indeed? I think that that should be borne in mind.

Mr. Kirk: I thank my hon. and gallant Friend for that point.

Mr. Ronald King Murray: The Minister has rightly drawn attention to the element of risk and to the fact that any episode of this kind does involve an element of risk. The reports do not make very clear what rescue facilities accompanied the boats in this race. Can the hon. Gentleman tell us what rescue facilities there were? If not, can he say whether this aspect will properly be canvassed at the inquiry?

Mr. Kirk: Yes, as I said in my Answer to my hon. Friend, there were eight escort ships with radio, and each boat in the race carried more life-saving equipment, including life jackets, than would have been needed by the crews; so in fact I think that all reasonable precautions were taken. It is only regrettable that, clearly, they were not enough.

Mr. Hicks: As Member for a constituency which includes the coast off which this unfortunate event took place, may I, too, express my sympathy to the parents and relatives of the two boys concerned? May I also pay tribute to all those persons of the various organisations which assisted in the rescue operations, and to all those who participated in an individual capacity in the coastal villages and towns? There is just one further aspect to which I would like the Minister to draw the inquiry's attention. This is the question which is being asked locally and is worrying people. It relates to the apparent omission to call in the assistance of the various fishing boats and shark angling boats which were in the vicinity that day. Most of those 20 or so boats are equipped with radio, and, of course, their skippers and crews have an intimate knowledge of those coastal waters and would willingly have helped. I would ask the Minister to bring this to the inquiry's attention.

Mr. Kirk: I am sure the board will look at this point. Of course, help would have been welcome from all sources. We got, as has been pointed


out, very considerable civilian help, for which we are extremely grateful.

MR. FEDOSEYEV

Mr. Dalyell: I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 9, for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration, namely,
the granting of asylum to Mr. Fedoseyev of the Soviet Union.
It is a long tradition in this country that we accept those whose political opinions may lead them into difficulties in their own country. In this, we go back as far as Lenin. The urgent and specific matter is not so much the granting of political asylum but the definite reports of so-called "de-briefing". I had hoped that this matter would have been raised at Question Time, but it was not reached. The matter is important because once we start de-briefing senior Soviet citizens then we put in jeopardy the whole of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. I hope, therefore, that there will be a statement from the Government clarifying the position and making clear exactly what the British position is.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. Gentleman asks leave to move the Adjournment of the House for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that he thinks should have urgent consideration, namely,
the granting of asylum to Mr. Fedoseyev of the Soviet Union.
As the House knows, under Standing Order No. 9 Mr. Speaker is directed to take account of the several factors set out in the Order but to give no reason for his decision. I have given careful consideration to the representations that have been made, but I have to rule that the hon. Gentleman's submission does not fall within the provisions of the Standing Order and, therefore, I cannot submit his application to the House.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Ordered,
That at this day's Sitting the Mersey Docks and Harbour Bill may be proceeded with, though opposed, until any hour; and that, notwithstanding the provisions of paragraph (1) of Standing Order No. 4 (Statutory Instruments, etc. (Procedure)), the Motions relating to Agriculture (S.I., 1971, Nos. 854 to 857) may be proceeded with for a period of one and a half hours after the proceedings on the Mersey Docks and Harbour Bill have been disposed of.—[Mr. Eyre.]

Orders of the Day — SUPPLY

[22ND ALLOTTED DAY],—considered.

MUSEUMS AND GALLERIES (ADMISSION CHARGES)

3.42 p.m.

Mr. Andrew Faulds: I beg to move,
That this House deplores the imposition of entrance charges to the national museums and galleries which will diminish educational opportunities, particularly for the young and old; and declares its opposition to such charges, which will further the Government's clear intention of creating a divided nation.
A proposition to charge entrance fees for museums came before the House on a previous occasion. It was withdrawn, in a single sentence, by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Stanley Baldwin, after Mr. Foot—an earlier Mr. Foot—had this to say:
It is quite possible for a junior clerk in a Government Department, who couples a faculty for figures with an entire lack of imagination and intelligence, to make all kinds of suggestions for increasing the national revenue. Turnstiles may be put round our public parks and commons, and admission fees might be charged for our abbeys and cathedrals, and even for the Galleries of this House."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 26th March, 1923; Vol. 162, c. 141.]
I had imagined that this ludicrous imposition of charges had been garnered by some official to fill out a neat package for the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time of his mini-Budget. If so, that poor clerk's prospects are somewhat diminished. I had not thought that the Minister responsible for the arts would go out of his way, as he did in another place on 16th December, to press himself eagerly forward as the one person responsible for this imposition. Viscount Eccles has somehow acquired a reputation as a connoisseur of the arts when, in fact, he is merely, as most of us know, who know something about him, a commercial collector and part-time dealer—[HON. MEMBERS: "Cheap."]—"cheap" is an appropriate adjective for the noble Viscount. If hon. Members wish to dispute this, perhaps they will refer to a better authority than myself—Denys Sutton in the April issue of Apollo. He is better known. I suggest that Apollo as

bedtime reading would do hon. Members a world of good. Viscount Eccles is better known to his colleagues inside and outside the House as "Smartie Boots"—[Laughter.] I am glad the term is so easily recognised. He is the gentleman who claimed the Queen as his leading lady at the time of Her Majesty's Coronation. Viscount Eccles said in another place:
I proposed to the Cabinet the introduction of charges to enter museums. Nobody forced it on me. I thought it was right and I asked my colleagues to endorse it.
We have no choice but to believe him.
There had been no consultation whatsoever with the directors or trustees of any of the 18 national institutions. The noble Lord apologised for this by saying:
I am very sorry about the feeling of the directors in regard to consultation, but anyone who has had anything to do with financial legislation will realise that this is a case where consultation was not possible. When the Chancellor of the Exchequer is making up his package of financial changes, we never air particular ones until that has been composed and then opened to Parliament in another place.
Later in the debate, Lord Diamond, who has more experience of Treasury practice, gave this statement the counter direct:
My Lords, it is a matter of fairly regular practice, to which I can bear first-hand witness, that the Treasury and the Inland Revenue consult…"—[OFFICAL REPORT, House of Lords, 16th December, 1970: Vol. 313, c. 1391–1470.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I am sorry to interupt the hon. Gentleman, but what he is saying is out of order. He may not quote a statement made in another place; only a Minister of the Crown may do that.

Mr. Faulds: You will forgive me in my innocence, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The point which Lord Diamond was making in another place was that it was possible to consult interested bodies before introducing measures of this sort, and it had been his practice to do so. This suggests to me that the Minister responsible for the arts did not consult because he did not trust his trustees. In the debate in another place on 16th December he claimed that he was consulting the institutions. These consultations had consisted of his writing, two days after the mini-Budget, on 29th October, to all the directors of the national institutions. Lord


Eccles made his usual misinformed and misleading excuse about the impossibility of prior consulation and went on to state that he would like to meet the directors of all the museums and galleries in London—12 of them—to discuss the points on which he hoped to have their views. He wrote:
A further letter will be sent about the arrangements for this meeting.
That is a categorical statement—quite categoric—but no such further letter followed. There was no such meeting and no consultation even then in the real meaning of the word.
Understandably, the art world took to arms. The trustees of the Tate Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery issued a statement deploring the charges. Baroness Lee stated in another place that the Trustees of the British Museum were also totally opposed, with possibly one or two exceptions.
The Secretary of State refused my request to publish the reply she received from the Trustees of the National Gallery. I think we can guess why. And still the Paymaster-General took damn-all notice of their various representations, which were as adverse from practically every Board of Trustees. In fact—and this is really disgraceful—he did not even bother to reply to their representations.
The extent of further consultation was a letter from the noble Lord, after his White Paper, asking how the various boards intended to implement his proposals. Then in the other place, on 26th May, he stated the following. If I am not allowed to quote directly—

Mr. Robert Mellish: You can quote the Minister.

Mr. Faulds: I am relieved to hear that.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: If I did not make myself clear, I should have explained that it is in order to quote from a statement by the Minister made in another place. What is not in order is to quote from the speech of some other noble Lord.

Mr. Faulds: I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for making the position clear. Then I will quote what the Minister said in the House of Lords on 26th May.

The legislation will be enabling legislation. We do not intend to impose charges on any museum."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, House of Lords, 26th May, 1971; Vol. 319, c. 1279.]
By saying that he was merely compounding his offence. He wanted the trustees to do his dirty work for him. He restated this intention on 15th June, as did the right hon. Lady the Secretary of State for Education on the same day in a Written Reply, that the legislation would not impose a statutory obligation to charge.
Those answers would suggest that the trustees were free to make up their own minds whether to impose charges or not. Not at all. Even the usually psychophantic Daily Telegraph, with its dedicated boys brigade of toe-the-liners, began to remark on the fact that "Smartie Boots", having put one carefully manicured foot in it, was about to plunk in the other. Its headline on 17th June was "No obligation on museum charges". But on 18th June it was "No option for museums on entry charges". Perhaps as a son of the manse, and in comment on the conduct of the noble Lord, I may, as my text for today, quote the well-known couplet:
O, what a tangled web we weave,
When once we practise to deceive.

Mr. Cranley Onslow: You might quote it properly.

Mr. Faulds: If I have misquoted, I have no doubt that somebody will misquote it a little better later.

Mr. Patrick Cormack: The hon. Gentleman is the errant son of the manse.

Mr. Faulds: They are usually the best. As the noble Lord was about to absent himself awhile from Westminster, visit-bound for Venezuela, one of the Daily Telegraph political correspondents caught him—I think at London Airport. He got the peevish comment from Lord Eccles:
Of course we are going to require all the museums to charge. I am sorry it has not been made absolutely clear.
He can say that again! The comment of Sir Anthony Blunt, the Director of the Courtauld Institute of Art—he is a kindly and charitable fellow, I am told—was that the Government had got itself into an absolutely unholy muddle. That is a pretty apt description. And with this lot it will not be the last time.
What Lord Eccles must say again is what he means by the word "require". Even after the enabling legislation, it will not be legally incumbent on the galleries to impose charges if they do not wish to, and Ministers know this. How is Lord Eccles going to "require" them to comply? According to Sir Anthony Blunt this implies the use of sanctions, and he wonders what kind of sanctions are intended. Some of us less charitably inclined than he would describe this sort of political pressure not as sanctions but as blackmail. The noble Lord himself made absolutely clear in the other place what he means:
… without the introduction of charges, the capital programme set out in paragraph 6 of the White Paper could not now be authorised to start."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, House of Lords, 26th May, 1971; Vol. 319, c. 1280.]
What is that if it is not blackmail? Those parts of the programme which are set out in the White Paper in paragraph 6 include the following: British Museum, amenities block which only awaits final planning permission from Camden, and the adaptation of the former Ethnography Galleries; National Gallery, completion of air conditioning; National Portrait Gallery, purchase of additional land and construction of a new building for the Gallery; Science Museum, air conditioning and expansion within the East Block; Tate Gallery, Bulinga Street extension; Victoria and Albert Museum, adaptation of Huxley Building, to take the Indian collection.
Further down the same column the noble Lord said in the other place [c. 1280–81]:
The second list,"—
he is talking there of paragraph 6 of the White Paper—
for which the money is not included in any programme, is of projects that are now authorised to start as soon as they are ready. When there is a large building project, it takes a long time to get all the plans ready right down to the details, and to be told, when you have the plans ready and you can go to tender, that the money will be there this year and in the succeeding years is something that has not been done before with the schemes in paragraph 6. They amount to approximately £11 million…
In other words, Lord Eccles is holding to ransom the trustees of the various boards. If he does not get his million quid they will not get their eleven million quid. He spelt it out clearly. But if

his sanctions are not against the building plans and developments and infer a cut in the purchase grants of the galleries, by calculating what the individual institutions might have collected and then deducting pro tanto, which is another suggested sanction of his, does he realise that in the case of the Tate he is making a direct threat to the livelihood of living British artists? Has he yet cottoned on to that simple fact? What an outrageous, mischievous way of conducting his policy.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: I welcome the hon. Gentleman in his maiden speech from the Opposition Front Bench, and I am only sorry that his translation has not altered his performance. [An HON. MEMBER: "We thought there would be a twist in it."] We are all entitled to make our own points. Is not the important point being made by the hon. Gentleman—[HON. MEMBERS: "Sit down."]—that there is in fact a museum extension programme of £1 million? If one takes this in relation to the record increase in the Arts Council grant of £2·6 million, then the museum charges fall into proportion.

Mr. Faulds: The hon. Member for Chelmsford, as is not infrequently the case, does not seem to have got the point. We are talking about the imposition of sanctions. We are not talking about parts of the Minister of Art's programme, some of which are quite good. But the Minister's behaviour and comments on this particular aspect of the problem have been outrageous, and the hon. Gentleman would surely not try to pretend otherwise.
The noble Lord is putting the trustees of the boards in an impossible position. He is prepared to use quite improper pressures to get them to comply with his wishes. Notwithstanding his threats, the Tate Trustees last Thursday, after their meeting, issued this courageous statement:
The trustees are not prepared to introduce admission charges unless there is an unequivocal public statement on behalf of the Government that they are required to do so—in other words, that in practice they have no freedom in this matter.
And the British Museum on Saturday made it clear that
Meanwhile they do not consider any action on their part is required.


I have no doubt that other boards of trustees will now begin to comprehend the ploy of the noble Viscount. And I have no doubt that they, too, will consider the implications of yielding to such improper political pressures. It is unthinkable that trustees, who give of their services voluntarily in the public sphere, should be subjected to political pressures by the Government of the day—this day or any other day. As David Piper, Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, wrote to The Times on 9th February
I took it for granted that a prime function of my trustees was to defend the integrity and long-term interests of the Gallery against the naughty expediencies of ephemeral politicians.
And there are a number of them in this House at the moment.
In an issue of this nature concerning public collections, there is nothing unhealthy in a democracy in a fair debate and a public rebuttal of Government interference. I wish that some of the trustees would remember that. Some of us who are not ephemeral politicians will be watching closely the reactions of the boards of trustees of the national institutions to the passing political ploys of what will be a very short-lived Government. Many hon. Members on both sides of the House interpret the trustees' rôle as one of prime responsibility to their institutions and to the public use of them, and their duty to be to resist the political pressures of any and every Government, whether the Minister for the Arts is Lord Eccles or the hon. Member for Smethwick (Mr. Faulds)—[Interruption.] Hon. Members may have to live with it.
Now I wish to deal with the educational aspect of this matter. Clearly these charges are educationally retrogressive, for most of the great national museums have been part of our country's free educational system for more than a century, the British Museum for two centuries. They are a great public store house of the scientific and artistic achievements of all mankind in his questing and continuing attack both on the frontiers of knowledge and on the limitations of self-knowledge.

Mr. James Allason: Is not the hon. Gentleman aware that charges were made at most of our

national galleries on two days a week before the war?

Mr. Faulds: I was aware of that point. But it is a pretty peripheral one when we are discussing the imposition of charges at all museums on every day of the week.
The noble Lord clearly is breaching a fundamental principle. It is not a privilege, but a right to enjoy communion with such treasures, without regard to one's ability to pay. Children should grow up in an environment where museums are of as easy access as parks and sports fields.

Mr. William Price: They will be charging for admission to those next.

Mr. Faulds: Probably they will.
It was Lord Eccles himself who described these institutions as
… one of the greatest areas of adult education, let alone of children's".
What did he promise in the Lords debate? He said that
… the social service principle of assessing categories of persons who might be hurt by increased charges will be applied to museum charges."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, House of Lords, 16th December, 1970; Vol. 313, c. 1393–4.]
What do we find in his White Paper? Children under 16 have to pay. It is true that they will pay only 5p, but to a host of children who now wander round in wonder and delight that 5p will debar them. It must be remembered that the inquisitive child of today is the Henry Moore or the Roy Strong of tomorrow—[Interruption.] The Under-Secretary of State may gurgle in that way, but Roy Strong himself told me that if there had been charges for admission to galleries in his youth he would never have become Director of the National Portait Gallery. The Eccleses and the Under-Secretaries of State of this world are out of touch with actuality.

Mr. Peter Rost: The hon. Gentleman is so knowledgeable about this subject that I am sure he will be aware that most galleries in the world make charges. Can he explain why attendances have gone up in cases where charges have been imposed?

Mr. Faulds: I have done my homework to the extent that I can give the


counter direct. The experience in comparable galleries like the Louvre, the Jeu de Paumes and Versailles, where charges were increased from one to three francs in the summer of 1967 is that attendances fell. Do not let the hon. Gentleman quote Norwich Castle at me, because I know more about attendances than he does.

Mr. Jeffrey Archer: The hon. Gentleman has quoted the counter direct. No doubt he realises that is from "Much ado about nothing", which goes rather well with his speech.

Mr. William Price: The hon. Gentleman can read!

Mr. Faulds: No. The surprise is that the hon. Gentleman has heard of the play.
Students will have to make arrangements in advance to pursue whatever their studies may be. But students do not work like that. They move as the spirit takes them, and the necessity to make prior arrangements will deprive them of the sudden decision to get up and go. Some hon. Members on this side of the House can remember being students. Perhaps the elderly hon. Gentlemen slumped on the benches opposite cannot. No wonder every educational body is deeply opposed to the charges.
Then there is the exclusion of old-age pensioners from the free categories. What a disgraceful decision. [HON. MEMBER: "Hear, hear."] It is even more disgraceful that we do not hear a few "hear, hears" from the benches opposite—[Interruption.] I thought that I might get a little support if I baited hon. Gentlemen opposite enough.
The number of old folk who visit museums and galleries is probably a very small proportion of attenders. But they are the fortunate few who have discovered the enrichment that such places bring.
The right hon. Lady made it clear why the Government will not exempt old-age pensioners when she said on 24th May:
The basic charge can only be kept to 10p by having the minimum of exemptions."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 24th May, 1971; Vol. 817, c. 42.]
So much for old-age pensioners, as long as Eccles raises his miserable £1 million. What about people on supplementary benefit or family income supplement?

What provisions have been made for them? In Tory philosophy such people do not matter. Any one who cannot reach in his pocket can do without.
The noble Viscount made the point that to charge was a political principle which was central to the policy on which right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite fought the General Election. Of course, they did not come quite as clean as that. But their intention was to disband and discard the social equitability of the Welfare State. We know how intensely they have gone about that exercise.
The House will recall the present Prime Minister's first words on the steps of No. 10, flushed with victory—

Mr. Ray Carter: "Open the door!"

Mr. Faulds: I should not be surprised if those were his first words, because I have no doubt that the attendants at No. 10 were as surprised as the rest of the country. However, the right hon. Gentleman's first reported words consisted of all the waffle about a united nation and not a divided one. Now we see an extension of the divisions which the right hon. Gentleman has consciously promoted in our community, spreading even into cultural matters. I think that Basil Taylor, the eminent art historian, summed it up most neatly when he said:
This is an additional divisive tax. The appreciation of our national heritage will depend upon our ability to pay.
The dogma of these little men and, I am afraid, these little women is deeply damaging to the social unity of our country and to its educational future. The Prime Minister is fully aware that the cultural community, everyone in the arts world, has lost confidence in the Minister for the Arts. He is a failure. Indeed, it might be more correct to describe him as a national disaster. The Prime Minister's problem is that he cannot kick his Minister upstairs. But there must be some board on to which the Prime Minister can palm him off. I gather from the Press that the noble lord has sought temporary refuge in Venezuela. He is probably trying to flog some more of our few Velasquezes.
In his absence, may I suggest to the right hon. Lady—she is, after all, his boss and a Member of the Cabinet—the fairest, simplest and most responsible way


out of the dilemma into which the noble Lord has put her and her colleagues. When one of Labour Government's Ministers of Education made what is now generally accepted as a ministerial bloomer about the British Museum Bloomsbury site, they did not plough ahead regardless of public and Parliamentary disapproval; they took notice of the informed strictures of the Trustees of the British Museum, who were deeply concerned about the matter, and set up the Dainton Committee to review the whole vexed question, with the happy outcome that we now all know.
Has the right hon. Lady not the sense or the sensibility—or has she neither—to face the fact of the near unanimous hostility and opposition to the imposition of these charges? It is no use her pretending that there is not universal opposition to this measure, because both she and her underling know the facts. It is, after all, not only the noble Lord's political future which has come to judgment; it is her own as well, because she is the Minister finally responsible.
Will the hon. Lady consult her right hon. Friend the Prime Minister—we do not expect an answer tonight—and consider the setting-up of a Committee properly to examine this whole question? "Smarty Boots" can go hang himself with his own bootlaces. The important thing is to set up a Committee.
The right hon. Lady can still the storm raging in the cultural and educational world: she can bring blessings untold on the future development of our museums and galleries; she can salvage a shred or two of the Government's rapidly declining reputation for straight dealing; and she can alter a degree or two the divisive course on which the Government are bound. Has she the guts to do it? Or perhaps, as she is a right hon. Lady, I should phrase it slightly differently: has she the heart not to do it?

4.12 p.m.

The Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mrs. Margaret Thatcher): We have had payment for drama for many years, but that does not seem to have deterred some people from becoming very dramatic.
The hon. Member for Smethwick (Mr. Faulds) has made a maiden speech from

that Dispatch Box which could scarcely be called non-controversial. But I agree with him on one thing: we are not all ephemeral politicians—certainly not those of us on this side of the House. I am happy to reply on behalf of my noble Friend the Paymaster-General who, in education, is universally acknowledged as one of the greatest Education Ministers of all time, and who has done a great deal for the artistic world, as I shall show later in my speech.
The hon. Member for Smethwick has made a number of serious points, and I shall hope to cover his main arguments during my speech. He chose his own tone. I shall choose a slightly different, quieter tone.
There are several things upon which we can all agree. First, that the valuable collections of the museums and galleries should be properly house and displayed, maintained and expanded, so that they can be enjoyed by as many people as possible.
Secondly, that in many cases the present facilities are insufficient for this purpose and that more resources, both capital and revenue, are required.
Thirdly, that considerable sums of Exchequer moneys will continue to need to be injected into the creative arts—music, drama, art—to further their development and to bring them to the public.
Fourthly, the costs are not in dispute. They are all derived from published figures in the Civil Estimates. The net voted expenditure on national museums and galleries affected by charges is £18·5 million per annum. The total number of visitors is estimated at 16 million. Therefore, the cost borne by the taxpayer is significantly above £1 per visitor to the museums and galleries.
The number of people employed in the national museums and galleries in England and Wales this year is 3,400. This is a labour-intensive service. By contrast, I should perhaps mention that the staff of the D.E.S. responsible for the central Government rôle in education and science are fewer in number. They number 3,000 in England and Wales.

Mr. John Mendelson: What is the significance of the figure of £1 per visitor? Is the right hon. Lady implying that if there were slightly fewer


visitors we ought to close down the collections of the British Museum to which scholars have been going for so many years? What is this nonsense about £1 per visitor?

Mrs. Thatcher: I was implying that the hon. Gentleman might be able to do a little mental arithmetic. I am sorry if I was wrong.
Charging for admission to national monuments, collections, historic buildings, and so on, is an old-established practice. At the Tower of London, where the attendance is 2·3 million per year, the charge in April to September is 20p for adults and 5p for children and old-age pensioners. At the Zoological Society in Regent's Park, where the attendance is 2 million per annum, a charge of 45p is made for adults.
Charging for admission to museums and galleries is no new principle. The Tate, the Wallace, the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, the National Gallery for Scotland and the London Museum have all made charges at some time in the past—mostly before 1939. The Victoria and Albert Museum made charges prior to 1914. Some of these galleries now make charges for special collections. For example, the Tate, and recently the Victoria and Albert, charged 30p for the exhibition of costumes used in the TV series Henry VIII. The day on which I visited the Victoria and Albert, that was the busiest part of the museum.

Mrs. Renée Short: Does the right hon. Lady seriously suggest that because individual and special collections are brought together for which charges are made that should be the criterion for charging always when anyone wants to go into a museum or gallery? Does she not think that there is a reason—possibly a very good one—for people being willing to pay to see a collection which may never be assembled again?

Mrs. Thatcher: No. I am pointing out that charging is no new principle, either in general or in relation to special collections. These matters are not in dispute because they are facts. As no new principle or practice is involved, it would seem that the argument is about narrower issues.
The difference between us is whether those who can and do visit the museums should pay a little more towards their upkeep through admission fees than those who cannot or do not. We accept a charge for admission in the case of opera, music, drama, and so on, although they also are subsidised.
The alternatives for the museums and galleries are: first, no extra money in real terms; secondly, extra money from the taxpayer on the usual basis, regardless of whether he does or can use the facilities; that is to say income for income, the man in the Outer Hebrides or in the West Country pays the same as the person who, living nearer, can readily use the main national facilities; or, thirdly, extra money from those who enjoy museums and galleries by way of a charge of about one-tenth of the subsidy which the taxpayer will continue to pay. It seems to me that most visitors, realising that the taxpayer already pays about £1 per visit, would be quite prepared to pay 10p themselves.
I turn now to the charges in the White Paper. The aim is to obtain a net additional income of £1 million. This is a modest aim and the individual basic charge of 10p, or 5p for children under 16, is well within the means of most people. The season ticket of £1, or 50p for those under 16, is excellent value and should encourage more people to visit the museums more often.
The Motion alleges that these charges will diminish educational opportunities. That is not so. Special arrangements are made for educational parties which, I believe, will enhance the value of the visits. In 1969 Her Majesty's Inspectorate visited 12 national museums in London, and one in Cardiff. It also visited some other museums in London and the provinces. Its objective was to examine the contributions of museums to education, and to suggest how available resources might be better used. Its experience and findings are being collated and will appear as an education survey as soon as possible.
It is perhaps superfluous, but I do, nevertheless, stress that the inspectorate found everywhere a great desire on the part of the museums staffs to contribute as much as possible to the education of our young people through the exhibits in our museums. But almost all the


museums reported inadequate facilities, and all await increased resources.
The specific point to which my attention has been drawn is that the value of many school visits would have been greatly enhanced if there had been discussions between the teacher and the museum education staff before the plans to visit the museum were made. The White Paper, in providing for free prearranged educational parties, will encourage more of that kind of discussion. It will enable museums to spread the visits in such a way that the parties receive the maximum attention and benefit from their visits. Scholars who visit museums by arrangement will, of course, continue to be admitted free.

Mr. Nigel Spearing: Would not the right hon. Lady agree that where there is free access to museums, particularly in the London area, one of the great benefits of school parties is that it is hoped that the child will visit museums fairly frequently on his own afterwards? Would not the right hon. Lady agree that the imposition of charges will reduce the opportunity for such later visits?

Mrs. Thatcher: From an educational point of view it is better that the child should go first with a teacher or a guide. He will gain more that way. Subsequently, he can go to the museum by paying 5p, which compares very well with charges for visits to the zoo, to the Tower, and to other places at which there are large attendances.

Mr. Norman Buchan: Either the right hon. Lady has not understood what she is saying or she is confused. She is saying that educational visits will be a valuable experience for a child if they are prearranged, but that is what happens today. There is no difference. The right hon. Lady should not claim any merit for her scheme which will allow educational visits to be arranged. What is the merit that she is claiming?

Mrs. Thatcher: Quite simply that under the arrangements set out in the White Paper educational visits with teachers will have to be prearranged. The prearrangement will enable discussions to take place between the museum authorities and the teachers. That does

not always happen now when teachers take parties to museums. The educational value of a prearranged visit is specifically provided for in the White Paper. The Inspectorate found that what is proposed does not always happen at the moment, and it recommended that it should.
A number of my hon. Friends—the hon. Members for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas), Louth (Mr. Jeffrey Archer), Ipswich (Mr. Money), and many others—have asked my noble Friend to make special arrangements for retirement pensioners, and the hon. Gentleman mentioned them this afternoon. They and other commentators have pointed out that on production of their pension books pensioners can secure admission at much reduced prices at a number of institutions For example, at the Tower of London and Hampton Court, although the charge in season is 20p for adults, old-age pensioners can get in for 5p. At the Queen's Gallery, although the charge is 15p, old-age pensioners can get in for 5p. Many cinemas have specially reduced prices on certain days, and some local authorities have concessionary travel rates. It has been decided, therefore, that the charge for retirement pensioners will be 5p instead of 10p or 20p which others will pay. That charge will apply at all times, including during July and August when the basic charge for adults is 20p.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: While I should have preferred no charge at all for old-age pensioners, nevertheless that is a very important concession and a great improvement in the position, for which I am grateful.

Mrs. Thatcher: I am grateful to my hon. Friend.

Mr. Edward Short: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. On two occasions the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas) has abused the right to intervene. Surely the right to intervene was never meant to be used for purposes of that kind, and he has done it twice during the debate.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The right of intervention depends on the Member who has the Floor. If he gives way it is in order for the hon. Member who intervenes to say what he likes.

Mrs. Thatcher: My noble Friend is also considering the possibility of a family ticket available from a tourist authority, and whether a special combined season ticket can be issued to tourists extending present arrangements for admission to ancient monuments and historic houses.

Mr. Patrick Cormack: I hope that my right hon. Friend's noble Friend will give special attention to the holders of supplementary benefit books, and give them free admission.

Mrs. Thatcher: My noble Friend is considering the suggestion that pensioners receiving supplementary benefits should be admitted free, but I must tell the House that I have carried out a few preliminary investigations, and as a result I can foresee some administrative problems. There are three books—one for the basic pension, one for the basic and supplementary pension, and one for the supplementary pension only. All three books look identical on the outside. Indeed, it has been the object of successive Governments to make them virtually indistinguishable one from the other so that when a pension is collected from the Post Office no one can tell whether the drawer is on assistance, to use the old phrase, or not. It would require a close examination of the pages of the book to tell whether a person was receiving supplementary benefit. Those who would be required to tender their books in order to obtain a reduction in charges might not wish that a further examination should be made. My noble Friend and my right hon. Friend will consider those factors, and I should be grateful for the views of hon. Members during the debate, but I remember looking at the books to see how easy it would be to identify the person who was on supplementary benefit.

Mr. Robert Maclennan: rose—

Mrs. Thatcher: I have already given way a great deal and I know that many hon. Members wish to take part in the debate. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will allow me to continue.
I turn to the capital programme in the first paragraph of the White Paper—

Mr. Maclennan: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The right hon. Lady gave way, and understandably you ruled that it was in order, to two interventions which were of a congratulatory nature—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Member, but I am sure that the point he wants to make is not a point of order. The right hon. Lady—or, indeed, anyone who has the Floor of the House—can give way if she wishes. What is said by the Member who intervenes is of no concern to the Chair.

Mr. Maclennan: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Are you saying that it matters not at all what an intervenor says, that he cannot be out of order?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: No, I am not saying that. All I am saying is that the Member who intervenes can say what he likes provided that what he says is in order, and the material, generally speaking, of what he says is in order unless it contravenes some clearly known rule of the House.

Mr. Maclennan: Perhaps I may seek some clarification on that point. Hon. Gentlemen on the Government side have intervened to make what appear to be prearranged interventions in order to congratulate the Minister on making a a concession. It gives the clear impression that the proceedings of the House are being abused. It takes up time and precludes genuine interventions. The right hon. Lady has objected to someone intervening to clear up an important point in the debate. That is a most unsatisfactory practice, and it does not seem proper if one type of intervention is allowed by the Government, and another genuine inquiry is not.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Whether what the hon. Gentleman is putting is true or not, it does not make any difference to what I have said. I am sure he will recollect that very often Opposition Front Bench speakers draw great encouragement from something which their back benchers say by way of intervention. It is really the same all round.

Mrs. Thatcher: I believe that I have given way more to the Opposition than to my own side. I was only trying to continue my own speech—

Mr. Kenneth Lewis: On a point of order. Is it in order for hon. Members opposite to use a point of order to show clearly that they do not agree with the concession which the Secretary of State has just made?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I believe that I had made that part quite clear.

Mrs. Thatcher: I turn now to the capital programme. In the first paragraph of the White Paper, the Government, having announced the charges, said:
…in consequence the Government are able to provide additional resources for the conservation and display of their collections.
We therefore announced
… a further substantial programme expected to lead to expenditure over the next five years averaging £2 million a year.
The schemes in paragraph 6 have hitherto been waiting in the queue. Now there is a commitment to start when planning and design are completed, and this will add to the capacity of the institutions to look after their collections and to display them to visitors who are expecting higher and higher standards of display.
The hon. Member for Smethwick referred to legislation. There has been some confusion about the rôle of legislation in the matter of museum charges. May I set out the position and stress that there has been no change of policy?
First, some museums have an express statutory power to charge and some have charged in the past. These need no special powers to charge in the future. Second, there is some doubt about whether the British Museum, the British Museum (Natural History), and National Galleries of Scotland and the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland have power to charge. The Government's legal advice is that the doubt is such that legislation is required to give a clear power to charge. The purpose of the legislation is therefore to put the power to charge beyond dispute.
In the words of the White Paper:
Legislation to enable the Trustees of the British Museum, The British Museum

(Natural History), the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland the National Galleries of Scotland to charge will be introduced.
The enabling nature of the legislation has been made clear throughout.
The national museums and galleries are almost wholly dependent for their expenditure on Government finance through the taxpayer. Therefore, once the powers are complete, the decision that the charges should be made is the Government's. On the understanding that £1 million annually in charges should be forthcoming, and in good faith, the Government are providing extra resources for museums and galleries. These will benefit those who use them and please all connected with them.
On this basis, and with the clear statement that the decision to charge is the Government's and the Government's alone, my noble Friend is confident that the trustees will co-operate in making the administrative arrangements best suited to their own institutions. The scheme must be simple and cheap to administer.
It is clear, therefore, that the Government are taking the responsibility and are not shuffling it off on to anyone.

Mr. Buchan: Explain that.

Mrs. Thatcher: I have explained what I believe the trustees want, that the Government are taking responsibility for the charges. The Government are also the trustees for the taxpayer, so it is right and proper for the Government to say that, if extra money is required, it should come not from the taxpayer alone but those who regularly use and enjoy the facilities in the galleries. But no one is shuffling off responsibility to the trustees. My noble Friend and I and my right hon. Friends will carry it.

Mr. Faulds: Will the right hon. Lady make it clear that she is issuing instructions, regardless of their wishes, to the trustees of the national institutions to impose charges?

Mrs. Thatcher: That is quite clear. The Government require charges to be made. I hope that I have made that quite clear—

Mr. Faulds: And that is what the trustees want?

Mrs. Thatcher: I understood that the trustees wanted an unequivocal statement. I believe that I have now given them what they want.
Throughout his first year of office, my noble Friend has taken a positive and creative approach to the arts as a whole. The grant for the Arts Council was increased by £2·6 million for 1971–72. He has set in hand plans for rehousing the British Museum Library at a cost of £36 million over 13 years.

Mr. Faulds: My right hon. Friend did that.

Mrs. Thatcher: As usual, the right hon. Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Central (Mr. Edward Short) did the preliminary planning, but it was left to someone else to make provision for the money. It is always left to someone else to make provision for the money, whether it be for the British Museum Library or the Arts Council.
Although it is dealt with in a separate White Paper, the British Museum Library project will release space for the other collections of the British Museum. My noble Friend has secured the extra capital resources mentioned in the White Paper, amounting to a 50 per cent. increase over previous provision, and the revenue requirements will go up too.
This is a programme for increasing and improving the heritage of the nation. To suggest, as the Motion does, that charges amounting to £1 million a year will divide a nation that already spends over £1,800 million a year on alcohol, £1,700 million on tobacco, £420 million on books, papers and magazines, £413 million on other entertainments and £59 million a year on the cinema is utter nonsense. I do not understand the logic that £59 million a year on films, good, bad or indifferent, does not divide a nation, while £1 million a year on wonderful pictures, sculptures and other treasures does divide a nation.
The cost of museums and galleries must rise if new accommodation is to be provided. If we do not attempt to make greater provision to display our treasures, we shall be throwing away one of the great educational opportunities of the present. The choice lies between levying increased taxation for all or charging a small amount—about one-tenth of the cost per visit—to those who use the galleries. I believe that, with the great expenditure

demands now upon us, the latter is the better solution. I ask the House to reject the Motion.

4.37 p.m.

Mr. J. Grimond: I approached this matter with an open mind. I know that many galleries in this country have charged and that, many galleries abroad charge to this day. I do not believe that the imposition of these charges will mean the end of civilisation, but, equally, the more I examine the case for them the weaker it seems to be.
The right hon. Lady said that it was unfair to ask people from the remote parts of the country to pay through taxation for the upkeep of our national museums and galleries. It might be thought that since I represent the most remote part of the country I would be sympathetic to that argument. But let us consider what is happening. There was removed from the islands of Shetland a treasure of peculiar value and interest to Shetlanders. It is stored now in a museum in Edinburgh. It will not be given back to us. On the contrary, the Shetlanders will have to pay not only to go to Edinburgh but also to see it when they get there. So this charge will be of no benefit to us.
This whole debate gives us the opportunity to examine the thinking behind this policy. First, although one may welcome the concessions for old age pensioners, I deplore the tendency to divide people into categories and to make what amounts to little concessions and payments in kind for some of our fellow citizens who are allowed to live in unreasonable poverty. Second, I do not think that by raising £1 million towards what the Minister herself said will be a much bigger sum one will be doing very much for the great artistic life of the nation. When one considers the amount of money which will be raised by this and the trouble that it will cause, the case for it falls to the ground. Nor is it absolutely essential for this country always to go on doing things that it did 30 years ago or to follow the Continent in every particular.
I should like to explore what the money will be for. The crying need in this country is to support the living arts. If it were going directly to living artists, I would have far more sympathy for


this imposition. We should not even embark on a bigger programme for the galleries and museums until we have examined a little more what is happening in them. I am told that there are several thousands of pictures in the cellars of the Tate Galleries. I am told—I am open to correction—that there is a large mural by Augustus John which has never been unrolled and has been there 30 or 40 years. First, some inventory should be demanded of what we are keeping in our collections before we either put more stuff into them or build larger buildings for them.
It will be said that these things are retained in the cellars of museums and galleries for two purposes, firstly, for scholars. I do not believe that a collection of pictures for scholars is a valid purpose. By all means let those interested in pictures carry on research and so forth, but the deliberate acquiring of pictures, some of which are extremely enjoyable but not of first-rate quality, for the sake of putting them away for scholars is a bogus aim.

Sir Richard Thompson: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Grimond: No, there is no time. I am sorry to disappoint the hon. Gentleman, but our debates are about disagreements, and people must expect others to say annoying things. There is too much research. As Yeats felt in his description in "The Scholars":
All shuffle there; all cough in ink;
All wear the carpet with their shoes;
All think what other people think;
All know the man their neighbour knows.
The purpose of pictures and works of art is to be seen and enjoyed. If the museums and galleries—I exclude the British Museum—must have more space, I ask that they do not destroy the environment in creating this. We very nearly had a disastrous extension to the Tate. In Chambers Street in Edinburgh one will see the danger in extending museums. There is one good house left in Chambers Street, and I would bet that it is knocked down for the sake of putting up a museum, possibly with among its pieces treasure from Shetland and other exhibits taken from other parts of Scotland—which would have been better housed in their home districts. Museums and galleries have a duty to see

that in extending themselves they do not desecrate their surroundings. They should exercise ingenuity in putting some parts of their collections into smaller houses and in moving them outside the centre of towns.
Why do we have these buildings in town centres? Museums and galleries too could dispose of a good many things, not necessarily to the public but to other collections, to the provinces and they can send them on tour. I do not in the least mind the National Gallery selling a picture to the National Gallery in Scotland. At least it got a very good bargain. We want to build up collections outside these vast storehouses in the middle of towns, which are incredibly difficult to house. The Greeks have not removed everything from Delphi and stuffed it into Athens. What we need is decentralisation in the whole of the museum and gallery psychology.
This is an occasion for protesting very sharply against the snobbery and prestige values which now dominate the art market. I see no reason why the taxpayers should pay another £2 million or so for yet another Venetian painting. I do not mind where the very great picture of Diana and Acteon goes. These are totally bogus values encouraged by some curators. The very people who claim for millions and millions of pounds to be given to collecting the work of dead artists are absolutely oblivious to the destruction of the living environment in Covent Garden, where a disaster is taking place. The Prada buys no more pictures.
We are talking about preventing people from going to museums for the sake of building bigger museums. We ought to consider showing all our national collections on a much bigger scale outside the centres of London and big cities.
I have one or two specific questions. Will Scotland have a separate bill? Whatever may be said about England, in the view of everyone in Scotland and the North of England people will be deterred from visiting galleries if there is a charge. There is no doubt about that. Every expert or ordinary person will say that in the North of England and Scotland charges will have the effect of decreasing the numbers who enjoy such collections as we have.
On the question of school parties, I am delighted that the Minister favours


them. I understand that they will be admitted free. But the point of going in a school party is that children should return afterwards in groups of two or three or by themselves. Furthermore, I am told that in Scotland school parties are discouraged. I not only want them to be encouraged, which should include not only being taken round by the curator, there should be positive encouragement to people outside education but interested in art who should take them round, too. I can think of half a dozen people in Edinburgh who would give added enjoyment to the children if they were persuaded to take them round. I hope that school parties will be encouraged and that children will be encouraged to return on their own afterwards.
Further, if these charges are to be levied, with all the expense, does it mean that they will be levied all over the country? The Minister eventually takes the responsibility for enforcing these charges. On whom will they be enforced? I do not understand what will happen at the British Museum. The season ticket is all very well, but the man who wants to pop out for lunch and return in the afternoon will have to pay twice. Will the prices be enforced all over the country?
What is the position of local authorities? Will there be any flexibility about the matter? In levying a charge which at most will bring in £1 million against what the Minister said the demand is for, £18 to £20 million, we shall be going against the gradual process of making our great collections free. This is an important issue. We are reversing that tradition, partly on the grounds that a contribution should be made, by those who look at these works of art, and partly on the grounds—I suspect that this is the real reason—of Tory philosophy.
But the Government are not asking people to pay directly for the use of the motorways. Why not? This will make no difference to the Exchequer. It will have to have a large administrative set up to collect the money and at the end of the day it will not be worth it.
I ask the Minister to live up to the colour of her dress which at least I approve of, and be a little more liberal to the arts.

4.47 p.m.

Mr. Robert Cooke: This Motion of censure has the full

weight of the Opposition Front Bench, from the Leader of the Opposition right down to the hon. Member for Smethwick (Mr. Faulds). I do not mean that in any way disrespectfully to the hon. Member for Smethwick, but it has a full backing from the Opposition in a "three-line Whip", to us a parliamentary phrase, requiring Members to attend, no doubt to support their party in the Lobby.
My right hon. Friend has given us a mass of factual information. I do not propose to repeat that, but I should like first to try to set this Motion of censure in its proper perspective, because I believe that the Opposition see it as the culmination of a long campaign to discredit the Government's efforts in the arts in general.
I believe that this campaign has been carefully organised over a long period, both in and out of Parliament. It may be news to hon. Members opposite that accidentally, Mr. Andrew Wright, who has been conducting the Campaign Against Museum Admission Charges in the country, sent a copy of a letter which he addressed
Dear Labour Member of Parliament
to one of my hon. Friends.

Mr. Faulds: There is hope yet.

Mr. Cooke: Yes, but I think not for the hon. Member when he reads the letter. The beginning is merely a preamble, but the second part is significant.
Our plan of action has been twofold. Firstly, to secure publicity we are holding an inaugural meeting of Monday, 14th December …
It mentions Lady Longford and Roy Strong as being participants, and others who have promised to attend, including Miss Lee, now Baroness Lee, and various others, Lady Llewelyn-Davies, Baroness Serota, and so on.
Secondly, we are attempting to secure grass-roots support —
this is the significant sentence—
…we are attempting to secure grassroots support. We have heard that Lord Eccles believes that there is little opposition to the Government on this issue because he has received only 200 letters of protest…We are urging everyone to write to their M.P. and to Lord Eccles. In furtherance of this, we are contacting every Labour constituency agent. Also, we are organising the circulation of petition forms. (One is enclosed.)
We would appreciate your endorsement of the Campaign and your help in any way. We


have real hopes that, with work in the public sector"—
I do not know whether that means underground work in the great national institutions, but I leave the House to judge that—
combined with strong support from the Labour Party itself, we stand a fighting chance of persuading the Government"—
and so on.
That document is to some extent significant since it appears from it that the Labour Party, having taken up a standpoint, felt it necessary somehow to get grass-roots support for it.

Mr. Faulds: There was no connection.

Mr. Cooke: There is certainly little connection between the aims and objects here and the grass-roots support which is mentioned, as one would assume that grass-roots support meant spontaneous public interest, really live public interest among thousands, indeed millions, of people, if this were such an important subject as the Labour Party would make out.
How many letters did hon. Members receive? I represent a great university city. I have served on the Museum and Art Galleries Committee. I am known publicly to be interested in the subject. I have had about two dozen letters, nearly all from known Socialist supporters in the constituency. Fair enough, but the Labour agent did not seem to have stirred things up very well. On any arithmetic one cares to use, if all the Labour Party agents were hard at work since last December—and, presumably, some Members of Parliament as well—they had a very poor response.
One can picture the scene in the Labour Party office, with people coming in every day to do business of one kind or another. The agent says, "Please sign this". The chap asks what it is all about. He is told, "It bashes the Tory Government". "All right", he says, "I will sign it". As a result, they have collected just over one signature per day per office. That is not very good, and it puts the whole thing in perspective. A great deal of the agitation has been based on a political motive, and there is no real public support for the cause which the Opposition are now putting to the House.
I come now to the question of the alleged confusion in my noble Friend's statement in the other place and elsewhere. The trustees of the Tate have been mentioned many times today. I say only this about them: they are not God, they are not the supreme court, they are not to be held in awe, particularly by the House of Commons. They are the same as any other trustees or committee running an institution.
In the Evening Standard last Thursday, there was a paragraph which said that a deeply disturbing anomaly had come to light in that the legislation which my noble Friend proposed was just enabling legislation and that the' trustees were "aghast" at the prospect. I should like to see a picture of an aghast trustee. I am not sure what sort of image that conjures up. Perhaps it could be the subject of a picture commissioned by some of the trustees.
The next morning, Lord Eccles replied and his words were quoted in the Daily Telegraph. He was quoted on the Friday morning as saying that the Government will require all 18 institutions to charge. Nothing could be more definite than that.
Despite what was said there—they must have known all about it on the Friday—the trustees of the Tate appeared in The Times on the Saturday in a long piece in which they appeared to take no notice of what my noble Friend had said. They would not, they said, introduce the charges unless an unequivocable public statement was made by the Government.
Surely, as a statement had already been made, this was merely stoking things up again—

Mr. Hugh Jenkins: rose—

Mr. Cooke: I had better not give way, since there are so many hon. Members wishing to speak.
I believe that the Tate meeting had before it a carefully prepared and detailed statement which was agreed at the meeting. It was all planned beforehand. To judge by the length of it, it must have been preconceived. The matter did not arise spontaneously at the meeting. The chairman of the trustees was asked by The Times whether he regarded Lord Eccles' statement as unequivocal. "No", said the chairman, "wait for Monday's debate". He has now got it. But I


submit that he had that unequivocal statement already.
In its leading article on Saturday, The Times referred to the Opposition's Motion today as "well timed". Well timed in what way? Notice was given at seven o'clock last Wednesday, the last possible day for notice for debate today. There is a three-line Whip on it. That is the Opposition's affair, but, if it were a matter of such enormous importance, one might have expected the Opposition to give the House a little more notice. I believe that they conceived it as just another chance for a quick in-and-out dart at the Government because there is nothing else they can think of at this time.
The Times says that the stage has been set for today's debate by the statement of the Tate trustees. Perhaps it is all part of the same plan. Lord Eccles is abroad at the moment. How very convenient for certain people. The Times says that the trustees are entitled to their view. Of course they are. I heartily echo that. It says also that they cannot escape Government action, and my right hon. Friend has dealt with that.
It was suggested that they could forgo the benefits which will arise as this policy is worked out. But if they did that, they would themselves be depriving the living artists referred to by the hon. Member for Smethwick of the benefits which will accrue from this and other policies. If they did not co-operate with the Government, they would by their own deliberate act deny themselves the benefits of the Government policy. Whether the trustees would continue to levy the handsome charge for special exhibitions which they levy now I know not.
The Times comes back to the matter again today with another piece, perhaps to stoke things up. Also, it promised a profile on page 12 of Lord Eccles. There was no profile on page 12. There was large space devoted to hats at Hurlingham and another large picture of young ladies waving placards about something or other. But no profile of my noble Friend. Inquiries of The Times made by the Library of the House have elicited no answer, save that it was removed at a late hour last night.
Before leaving the question of the Tate trustees—we are doing them proud today,

but there are some other things which should be said, and I am saying all this in good humour, having met several of them—I must point out that they are sophisticated political operators. They got their new site for expansion of their gallery by pretending to be prepared to knock down the portico. I do not for a moment believe that they were serious about that, but it was an extremely astute move because both sides of the House combined to protest. I believe that it was the Prime Minister himself who came to the House and said that another decision had been made, at which we were all delighted. But that was an example of the fairly sophisticated way in which the Tate trustees operate.
The Sunday Times, in my view, did the Tate trustees and their like a gross injustice when it said that Lord Eccles was having a difficult time with them—that may have been true—because they feared that, if the Labour Party returned to power, they would be ousted as a reprisal for too tamely accepting the charges. My advice to the Tate trustees would be, "Do not worry. You are doing a fine job for the Labour Party. You will not be for the chop". I do not believe that there was very much in that paragraph although, undoubtedly, it expressed a view which is held by some.
I come now to the White Paper. It was well received in the Press, not just by the Daily Telegraph. Many newspapers received it well, and the broadcasting media, at least, did it the honour of not being unduly critical. In fact, the behaviour of the broadcasting media has been somewhat strange in all this. There were almost weekly programmes based on the rumours going around about what the Government would or would not do about charges, and I myself received four invitations to appear on both sound and television. I declined those invitations while the rumours were being flung about because I was certain that the Government's actual proposals would be nothing like the rumours.
When the White Paper was published, the broadcasting media decided that there was not sufficient interest in the subject and it would not be covered on that occasion, but they sent me a letter to say that it would be covered when the debate took place. I look forward to an invitation to appear—or, perhaps, some of my


hon. Friends will be asked to appear—to put the Government's case.
I should like to continue with a few observations on the White Paper. I am glad that my right hon. Friend referred to the British Museum Library, which is omitted from the White Paper. Labour hon. Members will claim that it was their Government that got it under way. But if it had not been for my noble Friend's position and the stand he took as chairman of the trustees of the British Museum we should not have had the reversal of the previous Government's declared intent to abandon the site and not to proceed with the scheme. It was due to my noble Friend that we shall see that Library constructed to be the finest in the world.

Mr. G. R. Strauss: That statement has been made twice today. The reversal of the decision was made by my right hon. Friend the then Secretary of State for Education and Science. He decided that the Library should be built on the Bloomsbury site and that the finances should be provided to build it.

Mrs. Thatcher: I remember cross-examining the then Minister and asking him whether the decision was that the Library would be built on this site. The answer I got was that there would be a feasibility study and that it was not definite.

Mr. Faulds: A feasibility study, of course. How else?

Mr. Cooke: I am most grateful for the exchange between the two Front Benches. I leave the House to judge. But the facts of life are that if it were not for the energy of my noble Friend we should not be where we are on the British Museum Library. As the Minister making that decision did not make it of his own volition, pressures were put on him by the right hon. Member for Vauxhall (Mr. Strauss), myself and other hon. Members. I am grateful for the support that we had behind the scenes on this. But the Government were very stoney-hearted about the matter until they were pushed off their perch.
My right hon. Friend has gone through the White Paper at length, but I would re-emphasise the £11 million of new commitment in it for housing the arts. It

represents a 50 per cent. increase in the capital programme, and finances the promises made by Baroness Lee when she was the Minister for the arts in this House. The finance for many of her policies was not committed.
The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) referred to the position of the school parties. The galleries do not wish to discourage the organised school parties, but they do not have the facilities to receive them. It is all part of the policy arising from the White Paper that a greatly improved facility for the schools will be possible. If we had greater and greater numbers of schools now bringing parties, they would hardly see a thing or benefit by their visit. We have only to go to the British Museum when scores of children are there to see how difficult it is for them or anyone else to see the exhibits.
I have referred to Miss Lee, as she then was. There is no doubt that she made promises, but no provision was made to finance them. The Arts Council massively over-committed itself, and the moment of truth arrived when the Auditor-General produced his report. All it could say was that it had a moral commitment to produce funds, but no legal obligation, so it felt that it had not transgressed. My noble Friend came to the rescue and insisted that the present Government produced the money to honour these promises. That leaves him little room to manœuvre. He is in a sense a captive of the commitment by his predecessor. Lord Goodman and his officials have been sweating it out before a critical Select Committee of the House upstairs, while Miss Lee has vanished to greener pastures. Hon. Members opposite must bear the responsibility.
In the 1965 White Paper some brave hopes were expressed. It said:
It is to be hoped that one day fine permanent buildings for housing the arts will be universally available. But in the meantime enterprising localities might well investigate the possibility of mobile art centres and travelling theatres.… Temporary inflatable structures are already in use in industry. All that is needed is to find models that can be given the gay 'Come to the Fair' atmosphere essential for recreational purposes.
Considerable fun was made of that at the time, but the message there is that there were brave hopes, and nothing very substantial, and that is what we found.
I come again to the charges, because it is out of the charges that much of the new work will arise. We have been given some statistics. There are many charges that exist, and did exist for long years before the recent war and before the previous war at the great institutions, when money was money. Now we have the doubled charge at the Tower of London, and greatly increased numbers, and only recently the charge was doubled at the Wellington Museum, which is part of one of our great London institutions. To make for a better display and to cater for the greatly increased number of visitors, it is absolutely essential that we have the financial resources.
In passing, we might comment on the Hayward Gallery across the river, which is well known to many hon. Members on both sides, and which has always made a charge. About half the costs of running it are recovered in that way, and yet young and old people are queuing to go in and to pay a charge far in excess of anything my right hon. Friend has proposed.
I am surprised that the Museums Association has not been called in aid this afternoon. Some hon. Members have suggested that the association as a whole is implacably opposed to charges. I ask them to study what has already been said at a previous conference of the association and to see what happens when my noble Friend addresses the conference later this summer. A frank and fair discussion at that conference—the hon. Member for Smethwick laughs—

Mr. Faulds: He is in for a rough ride.

Mr. Cooke: I am sure that my noble Friend will be able to cope with that conference. Out of it a good deal of useful discussion will no doubt come, and perhaps the air will be cleared. My information was that before the General Election, before there was quite so much passion about the matter, about half the people who attended the conferences were quite agreeable to some form of charges.
Some hon. Members want free days. Free days have not worked well. I believe that the Kenwood experiment was silly, because it coerced people to go in their droves on days which otherwise would not have been so crowded. The free day is not a starter. The differential

nature of the charges proposed will, of course, help with crowd control in summer. In the British Museum at times it is quite impossible to see any of the exhibits.
We should try to involve many more people in the arts and the way in which they are supported. The regional arts associations are being built up by my noble Friend. I am depressed to find what a pitiful private response there has been to assisting them up until now. With very few exceptions, there has been practically no private response. What is required is a very modest tax inducement, involving many hundreds of thousands, indeed, millions of people.

Mr. Hugh Jenkins: On a point of order. The hon. Gentleman is taking the debate extremely wide of museum charges. He is going over the whole range of Government support for the arts. As a number of hon. Members on both sides of the House want to speak, Mr. Deputy Speaker, you may agree that he has perhaps been taking up a little too much time on subjects not directly relevant to the Motion.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Miss Harvie Anderson): Order. I think that the hon. Gentleman knows that that is not a point of order. At the same time, I think that the hon. Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Robert Cooke) must be well aware of the shortness of this debate, the number of hon. Members wanting to speak and the length of time he has already taken.

Mr. Cooke: I do not wish to detain the House but I have given way three times, and this is the first time I have spoken in the present Parliament. I shall try to bring my remarks to a conclusion fairly speedily.
I was speaking about tax inducements for people to contribute towards the arts, a matter which is bound up with the question of revenues and charges. We should allow taxpayers—with both large and small incomes—to deduct from the top of their income before tax a very modest amount of money to be given to a registered charity. That would mean that the arts in all forms could benefit. It would particularly help the museums and galleries we are talking about this afternoon. It would enable the institutions to build up


their resources in a way which would help them both with the purchase of new exhibits and with the conservation of those that they already have. It would also mean that a free market in works of art could still continue without the restrictions which some people want.
The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland said that museums as we have them are in many cases out of date. I echo that. Many of the great works of art would look far better, and be better enjoyed by those who want to see them, if they were returned to the places from which they originated. In this respect, the National Trust is doing fine work and so are the trustees for the time being of our other great historical buildings. Perhaps we should think carefully before we put more and more of our national treasures into repositories which are bulging at the doors and return some of them to where they can perhaps be enjoyed in an atmosphere of greater tranquillity.
The provincial museums are not directly implicated in the charges as national museums but they need help, too. Some of those who cry out loudest about the lamentable state of their collections are least able to get the proper support which they should get from their local authority. I am not surprised that Birmingham says that its collections are falling to pieces and that its buildings cannot possibly house them. Birmingham spends £310 per thousand head of the population a year, but it is not as much as York, which spends £900, and Liverpool, which spends £800. It is the local fault and not the fault of the Government that such a state of affairs exists. However, this is delicate ground and I do not want to go further into it.
Those who are interested in the arts are a minority, although a growing minority. I hope that what we can do in this House will increase their number and that somehow although there are so many divisions between us for political reasons we might manage to collaborate and achieve even greater success. We cannot do it if we are eternally divided. I believe that the row over this matter will be just a footnote to a footnote in the history books and that it is the solid work of my noble Friend that will be remembered, just as he will be remem

bered as the first Arts Minister of real standing and the man who gave the arts a firm foundation.

5.12 p.m.

Mr. Maurice Edelman: The hon. Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Robert Cooke), in a long speech which I will not seek to imitate, has expressed the bogus and deplorable elitism which is really the theme of the debate. The right hon. Lady, who was one of the spakesmen of the Tory slogan on the quality of life, has, by her frigid and computer-like speech today, done much to discredit the Tory theme expressed during the General Election. What the Government have done is to revive the tax on learning which was fought against during the nineteenth century by every liberal movement in the country, and it is certain that the whole attitude of the Government is based on the assumption that culture is too good for people who cannot afford it.
The hon. Gentleman spoke about the mysterious profile of the Paymaster-General which was dropped from The Times yesterday. I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Smethwick (Mr. Faulds), in his very warm speech, did something to replace the omitted profile. It is a pity that the Paymaster-General is absent in Venezuela representing the Government on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Carabobo. I assume that he is there because of his collection of books on Venezuela. Indeed, contrary to what was said by my hon. Friend, I endorse and value the fact that the Paymaster-General should himself have been a collector.
But I remind the House that the great slogan that the Paymaster-General propounded when he was President of the Board of Trade—he applied it to he workers—was, "Treat 'em mean, keep' em keen". His proposal for penalising the great mass of people who want to visit our national museums is a profound illustration of that slogan. It is certain that beneath that amiable exterior there is the authentic Tory—the one who, when he hears the word "culture", reaches for his slide-rule.
The Paymaster-General now asks for £1 million and proposes to obtain it by mulcting the visitors to the museums. We all must agree that the museums are in need of reinforcement. At a time of


inflation, it is desirable that they should have as much resources as possible. But if one wants to see why our art galleries and museums are diminished in strength, one has only to pay a morning visit to Sotheby's or Christie's, where one sees the stock exchange of art going on and where inflated prices make it almost impossible for museums to replenish their collections.
A museum which does not enlarge itself and develop is in danger of itself becoming a fossilised piece, an object only fit to be treated as a museum piece and one incapable of development. The reason for this extraordinary market place of art going on is the fact that art is one of the best hedges against inflation. The best blue chip is the purchase of a work of art. In a society whose quality we had hoped to improve, we see people buying works of art which, because of the penal cost of insuring them, they put into the vaults of banks. That is not a fantasy but a reality. One need only ask any bank manager what has happened to some of the works of art which have been bought at Sotheby's and Christie's and he will reply that they are in his vaults.
Therefore, the question for the galleries and museums is how they can replenish their resources. The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) made the valuable suggestion that those works of art at present consigned to the cellars of national institutions should be brought out and that museums and art galleries should be given by law the opportunity of selling those works which are superfluous to their requirements or which do not fit into the general framework of what the museum represents.
I believe that the Government should encourage private patrons. They could do so by tax remissions, as in the case of the United States, for those who lend or give works of art to museums, provided that adequate care is taken so that we do not have the kind of large-scale fraud which exists in the United States and which has become notorious. But the fact that there can be fraud does not mean that it should not be possible to provide tax remissions to encourage people to make contributions and donations to our museums and galleries. Another way would be to extend the range of the works of art acceptable for

death duty purposes. While today it is possible for selected works of art to be taken in part lieu of death duties, the range of works acceptable should be considerably widened. In that way there would not only be an enrichment of the galleries but it should be possible, without too much difficulty, so to strengthen the resources of the galleries that the "Eccles million" might easily be provided in the form of those donations.
What I would recommend to the Government is that a special arts fund be set up, empowered to enter the art market, to sell off works of art superfluous to requirements and also to make purchases using money from this fund, through the trustees, to balance collections.
It has appeared that hon. Members opposite think that museums and art galleries provide some sort of commercial service and therefore should be treated on a commercial basis. There is a kind of cash nexus between the visitor and the art gallery or museum. The fact is that museums and art galleries are not places of commerce, they are places of worship, to which people should have right of access for spiritual purposes.
We have only to study the other Eccles, the Eccles who wrote that admirable autobiography, in which he spoke about the quality of life, to see that he insists that the function of art is to supply that spiritual refreshment, so different from the kind of commercial service which hon. Members opposite have in mind.
I must make a brief comment about the old age pensioners and supplementary benefit pensioners. The most divisive thing which any Government can do is to categorise people and to say that one class of person shall be admitted on production of a card and that another class of person shall be admitted because they are students. In a sense we are all students. Everyone who goes to an art gallery or a museum goes to enlarge his own education and it is a completely artificial, dogmatic and doctrinaire division and stratification of people to classify them as students, old age pensioners, and so on. This is the most damaging thing that a Government can do.
It is true that there are some old people who have spent a lifetime interested in the arts and who wish to continue this interest, to enjoy the benefits which museums and art galleries can


offer. When they go they like to go with their families. They are often limited physically. Whatever the right hon. Lady may say, the fact is that old people will certainly be discouraged from visiting galleries and museums. What the Government are introducing is a bureaucratic differential.
I do not believe that charges will increase the number of people who go to galleries. It may increase the number of people drawn from a certain class, but it will certainly discourage the great mass of people who go today because they feel able to go, without paying and without diminishing their family budget. I say to the right hon. Lady "Beware of this proposal. It might result in nice, tidy, clean museums and galleries; equally it might have the effect of creating empty, or relatively empty museums and galleries." The right hon. Lady spoke of the situation before the war. I remember what happened then. It is true that the National Gallery was closed for two days so that copyists could have the chance to work there. The payment was put on as a bar, aimed at excluding as many people as possible from entering. That is exactly what happened. The number of visitors fell by 75 per cent.

5.24 p.m.

Mr. Jeffrey Archer: May I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Smethwick (Mr. Faulds) on his maiden speech from the Front Bench and say how much I enjoyed him on television last night in the film "The One that got Away." I must confess that I found the script on that occasion considerably better than his script today.
I am very disappointed with this White Paper. Almost its only virtue is that it is a small White Paper. I begin where the hon. Member for Coventry, North (Mr. Edelman) left off—on the works of art side. I endorse, and will not repeat, practically everything that he said. I should like to see a severe penalty imposed on those who seek to take works of art abroad and, at the same time, help given to those who try to keep them in this country. The balance between these two forces would lead to better works of art being kept in this country.
Because the hon. Member said almost everything that I wanted to say, I will turn directly to gallery charges. I first thank the Under-Secretary for the tolerance he has shown during my continuous bombardment over this question of charges for old age pensioners and the young. I made it clear to him some considerable time ago that if this matter came to the Floor of the House I would have to abstain from voting. I cannot, under any circumstances, agree to charge the young and the old for admission to museums and art galleries. I do not pretend that I found this easy, because my hon. Friend has done everything in his power to allay my fears, particularly with his announcement about lowering the charge from 10p to 5p.
The only comment I have is that this is a moral question and it does not matter whether the charge is lowered from 50p to 25p, 20p to 10p. Wherever the level is it is still there and the moral argument must remain. I hope that it is still possible for Lord Eccles to remove this charge.
Having heard over the weekend the argument about the supplementary benefit book I thought this was a bad idea because I realised that the Opposition would say that this was a means test to museums. I accept that. For that reason I say that this is yet another reason why I should like to see the total abolition of charge for the old and the young. Let us have the old and the young able to go to our art galleries and museums without any charge, without having to prove that they fall into funny little categories, whatever the books may look like.
When we discussed this subject I said to my right hon. and noble Friend Lord Eccles, and I do not think this is betraying a confidence, that I was desperately keen to see this charge removed and would abstain. He said that I was being sentimental. The Under-Secretary will remember those words. I would remind him of the words of the leader of our party, the Prime Minister, when the President of France said that my right hon. Friend was being sentimental about the New Zealand lamb issue. The Prime Minister asked, "What is wrong with sentimentality?" I endorse that feeling. I am sentimental about the old and the young.
If, when the Under-Secretary comes to the Dispatch Box, his argument is that I am sentimental and have not understood the figures, then it is an argument that I will take because to me it makes no difference. Sometimes it is not a bad thing for the heart to rule the head.
The hon. Member for Smethwick was a little unkind to my right hon. and noble Friend. Much of what he said was amusing and perhaps fair according to his beliefs, but it would be grossly unfair to pretend that my right hon. and noble Friend does not have a very sincere and deep knowledge of the world of art, far beyond that of a collector interested only in financial gain. He is a man of immense knowledge and we are lucky to have a man of his stature holding this position.
The other question which I should like to put to the Under-Secretary is what happens to those of us, the hon. Member for Smethwick and myself among others, who are Friends of the Tate? Do we still have to pay to enter our gallery? I go to one of these places every other Sunday. Will we now have to pay in addition to our annual fee? Many of the national institutions and art galleries will find that people will be reluctant to pay two guineas or one guinea a year for membership when they also have to pay normal admission fees. They will say that the Government are getting it with one hand and ask why they should give it privately. The very attitude which makes people give something because they believe sincerely in it will disappear overnight. Automatically and rightly, people wonder why they should give to a gallery if they have to pay to go into it. It is a natural attitude of mind, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will deal with it.
We spent a considerable time during the last election telling people that we were the civilised party and that we, rather than the Labour Party, cared about the old and young people. We spent a considerable time describing ourselves as the party which would get things correct financially. But we also said that we would be seen to be fair. Some Parliamentary reputations are gained in a short time and some in a long time, but they are almost always correctly gained. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary

of State, whatever their failings may be, are known to be fair. I do not think that anyone in the House would disagree with that. Yet they have proposed something which is eminently unfair, particularly as we said during the last election that, when we had sorted out the nation's financial problems, we would not forget people in need and people who should be treated differently.
I hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will bear in mind that it is important not only to get the nation's finances in order but to remember that in the world of theatre, art and music we are unrivalled. This is something of which we can be immensely proud. But perhaps even more important than being unrivalled in putting on the best productions and best music concerts and running the best galleries is the need that we are seen by the rest of the world to be a nation which treats its people in a civilised way. That is what we are biting into today.
The decision has been made by my right hon. and noble Friend, Lord Eccles. Because I genuinely believe that the petty charges proposed in this tiny White Paper will not help the nation, I shall abstain from voting tonight.

5.33 p.m.

Mr. Norman Buchan (Refrew, West): We have listened with deep interest and emotion to the hon. Member for Louth (Mr. Jeffrey Archer). In a sense, he has helped to save the soul of the Tory Party on what must be one of its blackest days—not because of the size of what is proposed, but because of its meanness, pettiness and philistinism. We are not even sure whether the £1 million to be raised in charges will be enough to pay for cleaning the windows of the museums and galleries. The White Paper cannot add to the resources of the museums and galleries. It is a White Paper which expresses the ideology of the Tory Party. That is what the Financial Times said, and I have no reason to disagree with it in its analysis of the soul of the Conservative Party. This is a sad day.
The whole basis of the Conservative Party was that it represented the accretion of the past values of this country and claimed to hold the line against the barbarians. Right hon. and hon. Members opposite have become the modern barbarians. I became a Member of the


House in 1964, and already I have seen a change in the values and attitudes of the Conservative Party.
One of the few cheers which we have heard today was heard when my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, North (Mr. Edelman) advanced proposals for tax-saving in return for the loan of private paintings or their acquisition. The Conservative Party has even brought art down to cash.
I draw the Government's attention to a poem written by Paul Jennings called "Lines Written in Despondency in Trafalgar Square". It ended:
O God, a dreadful army comes
Of foppish hardhats, po-faced bowlered bums
Whose mealy minds, whose souls of dust and ash
Chafe for the chance of turning art to cash.
That is what the Conservative Party is doing.
Secondly, sadly and pettily, the Government are dividing the nation. I have heard few things more obscene than the right hon. Lady the Secretary of State today demonstrating the difficulty of differentiating from pensioner to pensioner. The only thing which was lacking was the suggestion of a stamp with a number on the back of the wrist saying, "I am an old age pensioner". The right hon. Lady's performance frankly was disgusting.
The hon. Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Robert Cooke) criticised us on this side of the House for being political about this matter. But right hon. and hon. Members opposite fail to understand either the people of this country or our response to proposals like this. It goes very deep with us when we see such proposals and values interpreted in cash terms. Will the right hon. Lady consider what her exhibition, advocating separation and divisiveness, means to some of us?

Mrs. Thatcher: I was referring to the difficulty of making admission free for people on supplementary benefit. The hon. Gentleman is making my point.

Mr. Buchan: That is precisely what I mean. The Government have not an atom of understanding of the point. Her reason for rejecting the suggestion was the slide-rule analysis and the impossibility of implementing it. That is what Paul Jennings meant when he referred to

… mealy minds, whose souls of dust and ash
Chafe for the chance of turning art to cash.
That is precisely what the right hon. Lady and the Conservative Party are doing. [An HON. MEMBER: "Political grocers."] Absolutely.
I appeal to the Government to note what the hon. Member for Louth said. He has shown greater understanding of the matter than Lord Eccles has shown in the past year. The proposal to impose charges should be scrapped. I do not believe it will raise the money it has been said it will raise.
My second country is Italy. I have here figures for the charges made in the Uffizi Gallery. I never liked the proposal to make charges, and I hope that sooner or later it will be dropped. But there is an excuse for it. Italy has such a mass of art to preserve from Roman times onwards that the cost of preserving it would be huge if charges were not imposed.
In 1969, the two main galleries in Florence had 1,136,000 vsitors and their income was £82,000. That is probably more than the National Gallery will achieve. This shows that the Government are putting a cash price on our art for very little return.
Thirdly, the Government fail to understand how matters work. It is no use saying that it will be cheaper for children to go to the galleries. It is no use saying that admission will be free for educational parties. It is not the prepared visit to a museum which matters. This may be the trigger-off point. None of us knows how children are triggered off into this interest. I see them scampering into the Kelvingrove Museum, very close to my own home in Glasgow. One sees them rush to the engineering section to press the buttons. What would happen if this were a national gallery? Thank goodness it is not. It is a local authority museum in Glasgow, and, thank goodness, it is a Labour local authority.
This kind of thing will stop now in the premises of our museum in Chambers Street. There will be no more scampering of the children who go to press buttons. There will no longer be the spontaneous and natural expression and arousing of interest of a child or stimulation of a child's curiosity. Then there is the Edinburgh Museum of Modern Art


set in a marvellous setting in the Botanical Gardens. People go not only to enjoy the gardens; they then drop into the museum. This charge will be a barrier against them—against the snotty nosed Edinburgh kid who can go in because it is free. It is one thing for children thus to drop in, but if a child has to say, "I want to go to the gallery" and asks for money for that, then it becomes a formal, prepared visit, not a dropping in. During the summer months there are family Sunday afternoon outings which take place there, but will they if charges are imposed? Of course not. Then it becomes an expensive business. A husband going with his wife and two children will have to pay 12 shillings. It becomes a major item, a major outing, not an accidental dropping in.
The right hon. Lady makes a merit of that, as an excuse for her White Paper, that now there will be educational parties. It may be that we have not used our museums sufficiently imaginatively but this charge on everyone will not solve that, nor yet will it raise necessary revenues. Even if there are to be the educational visits, that does not give merit to putting a charge on everyone else.
The right hon. Lady's argument is an ideological argument and it will deprive children of the natural educational value of dropping in as they do to our galleries and museums. It will deprive the children of having their imaginations naturally aroused, and of their natural introduction to the arts accidentally. The right hon. Lady's argument is a divisive argument.
Of course people who are interested in the arts and consciously go out to see collections will continue to do that, but this proposal will be taking away that accidental stimulation which is and always has been a quality of our life far back into the past. It was the work created by the stonemasons who created Michaelangelo. Culture is for everyone. The significance of this ought to be understood. It was the same stimulus which built our churches and cathedrals in the late Middle Ages—not only in this country but in Italy and elsewhere abroad. These works are for everyone, but as soon as we have the concept of payment in this way, as soon as people have consciously to differentiate between

the accidental dropping in and the formal, prepared visit—as I say, a husband and his wife and two children having to pay twelve shillings—as soon as they have to think things out in this way, we put back the clock, we move back to philistinism.
This proposal is mean. It is petty. It is squalid. It is philistine. In the name of God, drop it.

5.43 p.m.

Mr. James Allason: There are about 950 galleries and museums in this country, most of which charge, and we are today discussing 18 galleries and museums on which charges are to be imposed, and yet we hear these impassioned pleas about how terrible it is to charge people entering museums. I must say that I am astonished that all this outcry comes from a party which for the last six years was charging for entry to the Tower of London. Yet hon. Members opposite say this afternoon, "How is it possible to charge for entry into historic buildings, to see stonework, to see the monuments of the centuries? How can people be charged for that?"
As we have heard, charges were made for visits to many of the national galleries we are discussing now. There were charges up to 1939. The reason those charges were abolished was the war, because the collections were put away and were not to be seen. For some time after the war the collections shown were not up to the standard they had been. So the charges were dropped. It seems extraordinary that the hon. Member for Smethwick (Mr. Faulds) and the trustees of the Tate Gallery seem to have forgotten that there was not always this national tradition of free entry into our galleries.
We hear this sad story of children, who have been running around entering museums free, who will not now be able to go to them because of the heavy cost of the charges to enter them. If there is all that anxiety felt by a child or his parents he can have a season ticket for 50p. Is there any child in the country who does not at some time of the year get presents amounting to 50p? There are many grandparents, I am sure, who would think it a very good Christmas present to give to their grandchild—a season ticket to a museum.

Mr. Buchan: I am very glad the hon. Gentleman has made that point. It is a fair one. It will be the good grandfathers and the good families who will do that, who are already doing that sort of thing, who will give that kind of present—not those of the little snotty face of whom I was speaking. That is the problem.

Mr. Allason: I want to press on, as I know many other people wish to speak.
As to the expenditure of the galleries, there are a great many items which are absolutely essential—upkeep, staffing, security; there are many matters to be considered. At the bottom of the list of items comes the question, "What else can we do with the money? Can we make new acquisitions?" Last of all comes conservation of the existing collections, and that, I am afraid, is in many galleries absolutely the last, and very little is spent.
Then there is the problem of the conservators. There is a great shortage of them already. A great many people would love to be trained as conservators, but the training is rather inadequate and a great deal more could be done in that way. In the matter of picture restoring the tendency of most of our national galleries is to rely upon the trade and there is very little apprenticeship within the galleries. I do not believe that the trade is the best place for this. Not always are the very highest standards required in the trade, which has to deal with the treatment of family pictures as distinct from works of art or the very highest standard, but ability to deal with those is needed in some of our galleries and museums.
Turning to the collections themselves, over the country as a whole some 40 per cent. to 60 per cent. of the collections are not shown at all. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) mentioned this. He said he saw no merit in a reserve collection, and I agree with him there. It is very wasteful to have a large amount of duplication, a large amount of material which a gallery has no intention of ever showing. It is wasteful in storage costs, and it is wasteful in the sense that it means gaps which might be filled in other collections. It is a great disservice to the nation for a gallery to hoard goods it does not want.
It has been suggested that galleries could dispose of surplus items by way of exchange and mart, but I do not think that is the best solution. It is better to make use of the sale room. Local authorities already have power to sell items in their collection, but it is very little used for fear of criticism. For instance, when the Dulwich Gallery recently sold the Domenichino abuse was poured on the trustees for daring to part with an item in their collection.
I see no harm in a picture from a public collection going to a private collector in this country. Many private collectors open their collections to the public and, so long as the picture stays in the country, it will eventually be available to the public. We cannot expect every collector's item to remain in this country for ever. If it is not required here, I see no objection to it being sold overseas and earning useful currency, remembering that such sales will bring extra help for the conservation of pictures and the management of galleries.
My right hon. Friend the Paymaster-General has achieved a great programme for the arts, to which the public will be prepared to make their small contribution. I think it was a surprise to hon. Gentlemen opposite and the public that the charges are so moderate, and I wish that the charges made in Italy, France and Spain were equally moderate. I believe that it is necessary and good to make admission charges to museums and galleries, and I utterly reject the Motion.

5.52 p.m.

Mrs. Renée Short: The hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mr. Allason) has shown the uncaring attitude of the Conservative Party about support for the arts. I reject his rather sneering remarks about young people and pensioners visiting picture galleries, and do not accept his comparison between visiting an art gallery and the Tower of London. I wish that the attitude he has taken had not been expressed in the House, although I suppose he has taken a lead from his Minister. No cogent arguments have been put forward why we should aim at this miserable sum of £1 million, and we have not been told what will happen if the £1 million is not achieved.
The Minister said that charges had been imposed before. We know that they are not new but, as several of my hon. Friends have pointed out, when charges were previously introduced at galleries and museums, attendance fell. I can only assume that the Government want to keep people out of museums and art galleries.
The Minister said that we have to pay to go to the theatre, to ballet and to the opera and we should therefore be willing to pay to go to museums and galleries; but that comparison is neither fair nor accurate. The cost of producing opera and ballet, which are an enormous tourist attraction, is recurring and ever-increasing; whereas the cost of looking after museums and galleries remains fairly static, apart from improvements and the building of new galleries. We are spending £11 million on galleries and museums, and it is not worth all the complication, difficulty and frustration involved merely to get back £1 million. This is an illustration of the Tory Party's philosophy of making people pay for everything. The Tory Party cannot bear people to get something which they have not paid for at the time of use. There is no mandate for this proposal in the Tory Party's election manifesto.
I hope that the hon. Member for Louth (Mr. Jeffrey Archer) will go further than abstaining and will vote with us. He clearly feels deeply about this matter, and I agree with much of what he has said, but he is wrong in saying that the Tory Party treats people fairly. We have seen many examples of how unfairly the Government treat certain sections of the community. I need only to mention the abolition of free school milk; no one can say that is fair.
There is a great deal of unfairness and injustice in the way we treat artists and people working in the arts. I am thinking particularly of the theatre and music, as this is where my main interest lies. If the right hon. Lady would tell the House that she has managed to get more money to help the living theatre and young singers and musicians, we should all applaud.

Mr. Jeffrey Archer: I have already mentioned many of these points to my right hon. Friend. One cannot always make one's speeches in the House so that everyone can hear them.

Mrs. Short: I am delighted to hear that the hon. Gentleman is keeping up the back-stairs pressure, and I hope that he will continue to do so with more success than he has so far achieved.
Will the Parliamentary Secretary give the House information about the legality of admission charges to galleries? A large number of bequests have been made to galleries and museums on the understanding that the public should be able to see them without charge. Mr. Turner made three wills containing several codicils. In each will he stipulated that the pictures which he was generously giving to the nation should be shown gratuitously to the public and many other artists have since given pictures to the nation on this understanding. The Government may not be entitled to make admission charges to see works of art which have been given to the nation on the understanding that the public should be able to see them free of charge.
We know what the proposals are from the White Paper. The suggestion that old people should pay 5p is pettifogging and mean, and I hope that the Minister will look at this again if she insists on going through with the proposal. I should prefer her to withdraw the whole mean proposal which will create complications in collecting the money and is just not worth the parliamentary time which is being used.
The practice of charging for admission is very mean to pensioners and it is quite disgusting that parents should have to pay for children. Many people have had their appetites whetted by being taken to art galleries by parents or relatives, or in school parties, and they want to go again. These charges will mean that they will not be able to go again. It means that young people and young married couples will not be able to go again unless they pay, and many are in no position to pay. When we talk about a charge of 20p a head, it must be remembered that for two people the cost will be 40p, which is not a negligible amount but is a large amount of money for people to find regularly.
If tourists come down to London from Scotland, from the North of England or Wales to spend some of their holiday


here, it will mean that they will have to pay twice as much as Londoners pay to have access to galleries all the year round. Where is the fairness there? It is illogical and I think that people will be kept away. When one visits art galleries in Paris, Rome, Milan or Florence the people one mostly sees are Americans and Germans with lots of money, and one sees few French people or Italians in their own galleries. Will this be the sort of thing that will happen here? Will our own people be pushed out, priced out, of our galleries when, for example in the summer, when they are on holiday, they may well like to visit a gallery more often. We must also remember that people in their lunch hours may want to pop into a gallery for a quarter of an hour or so to look at only two or three pictures. A person who visits a gallery does not want to spend hours in it at a time because he becomes exhausted. It is much better to pay a short visit to a gallery and to see what one wants to see. Some people visit galleries several times a week and many young people have a passion for visiting galleries. How are they to do this if they have to pay 20p a time?

Mr. Allason: Perhaps the hon. Lady did not hear it said that the season ticket for a year was 50p for a child and a £1 for an adult.

Mrs. Short: That is all very well, but one must remember the careful families who want to make provision for visits for their children. Furthermore, there are not many pensioners who can find a £1 for a season ticket. The hon. Gentleman must be far removed from the pensioners in his constituency and the sort of troubles they are having at present, with rising prices and so on. They live from week to week and are lucky to reach the end of the week when their pension is due. They certainly will not be in a position to find £1.
When the Prime Minister wrote to the trustees of the Tate Gallery, after they expressed their doubts about the proposal to introduce charges, the right hon. Gentleman put forward the rather curious idea, which is Tory Party philosophy, that a charge would make the public more rather than less appreciative of the artistic and historic value of the contents

of a collection. Does this mean that when the Prime Minister looks at the Rokeby Venus, or at a Titian or a Rubens, he appreciates it less because he does not have to pay for it? Would he get more sensual pleasure out of it, more intellectual uplift, if he paid a fee for doing so? This is indeed a curious philosophy to put forward. When people go into an art gallery and look at a Cezanne, or a beautiful picture of any kind or a piece of sculpture, it is not in their minds that they are enjoying it more because they have had to pay for it.
Why stop at art galleries? Why not charge a fee to go into a local authority park since that is provided out of public money? If local authorities, particularly the Tory-controlled ones, now decide to charge people to enter their local authority museums and galleries, then they may well decide to impose a charge for their parks. It might even be said that we shall charge people to bathe in the sea, as happens in some Common Market countries. We all know that one has to pay to bathe in the sea in Italy.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Miss Harvie Anderson): Order. I hope that the hon. Lady will stick to the terms of the Motion, and will recall the limited time available for debate on this subject.

Mrs. Short: I certainly will. I am only putting forward ideas which the Government might well take up in order to raise more money. This is the thin end of the wedge, and additional charges will be made. Presumably, these proposals making it possible to raise money will mean additional staff to collect the money. It may be that some galleries will have to install turnstiles at some additional cost, or may do other things which will reduce the amount of money that is likely to be collected. If the Secretary of State feels that money for the arts generally, and for galleries and museums in particular, needs to be raised in some way by making charges, let this be done on a voluntary basis. Many art galleries abroad provide for people to make a voluntary contribution and do not charge people to go in beforehand. I believe that in New York a large amount of money is raised in this way by voluntary contribution.

6.6 p.m.

Sir Richard Thompson: What a pity it is that on the rare occasions we discuss museums and galleries we should be restricted to half a day, and also that we should be restricted by the terms of the Motion to debating only one aspect of the matter. It would be better if we could put all the arguments for and against these charges quickly, and then talk about something more important. Nevertheless, that is the framework of this debate and I shall keep my remarks brief.
Of all the things said in this debate, I welcome very much the assurance given by my right hon. Friend that the Government take full responsibility for imposing charges. This clears the air completely because there has been considerable misgiving and doubt as to the true position.

Mr. Faulds: Unholy muddle.

Sir R. Thompson: Call it what you will, but we now know that the Government intend to take full responsibility in this respect. This is welcome from the point of view of the trustees. If any legislation goes through, it puts them in the position of saying, "These are the orders." It does not leave them with the difficult and perhaps odious situation of having to decide for themselves.

Mr. Hugh Jenkins: One ought to correct what the hon. Gentleman is saying because it might go out that the consequences of this debate will be that the trustees will be free to charge. This is not the case. The trustees are not free to charge and they cannot be free to do so until legislation it put through this House which has the effect of compelling them to do so.

Sir R. Thompson: I think that was a somewhat spurious intervention, since all I was saying was that the responsibility for imposing charges was now being shouldered firmly by the Government and it was not up to the trustees. My right hon. Friend was saying, as I understood it, that the Government would take on this responsibility and I believe that is what she meant. If I am wrong, I have no doubt that she will intervene to correct me.
I speak not for the trustees of the British Museum, of whom I have been

one for some 20 years, or as chairman of the British Museum Society, but purely as a private individual. Naturally, if I had the choice, I would rather not pay to go into a museum or a gallery. On the other hand, since museums and galleries—and I am thinking at the moment particularly of the British Museum—depend almost wholly on public funds for their maintenance, the enlargement of their collections and the like, whether those public funds are provided wholly out of taxation, which is what the Labour Party would like, or partially by charging, can be a matter for almost endless debate.
A vital injection of cash into our museums was badly needed. Speaking with long experience of the requirements of the British Museum, I know that, if the £11 million programme had not been produced, representing a 50 per cent. increase over the expenditure sanctioned previously, we in the British Museum would have been in a parlous situation.
At the time that the last Government, in a very misguided decision, fortunately reversed later under strong pressure from outside, proposed to separate us from our library, we were weighing the consequences of what would happen as a result, and we set in train a survey of our property at the Bloomsbury site. We wanted to satisfy ourselves that we were doing everything possible to improve the museum where it then stood. As a result of that, we have the present plan to build additional accommodation on to the museum. If it had not been for the injection of more capital into our funds, the trustees would have had to appeal to the public for funds in order to try to raise the money. Indeed, they had a plan to do something like that. Fortunately, we have been rescued from that situation by this further injection of public money by the Government.
As one who has seen for years the bad effect on the museum of continually being starved of sufficient funds to make the most of present collections, let alone expand and enlarge them, I am only thankful that the package, although it contains the elements of charging the public, has alongside it the provision of more funds than originally we thought that we would get.
I do not know how the horse-trading and bargaining goes on between the


Treasury and the Department looking after the arts. My guess is that, to get what was needed for the arts, my right hon. and noble Friend the Paymaster-General had to make some sort of concession on the charging side. However, what is important is that we should have the resources with which to carry on the museum, to do what we want to do for it and to improve the conditions of those who work there.
I do not know whether hon. Members have looked at that part of the White Paper which describes what the British Museum will get out of these additional funds. We are to have an amenities block. For years, one of our great shortages at the museum has been that, when we have wanted to stage periodical ad hoc exhibitions, we have had nowhere in which to mount them, other than by one of the keepers sacrificing part of his space and putting his ordinary exhibits aside in order to accommodate a special exhibition. The museum is now being provided with a facility that it has needed for years.
The museum needs better restaurant accommodation, not only for staff but for visitors. The present provision is disgraceful. That again will be provided.
The museum desperately needs more office space. There can be no national institution which is administered so economically as the museum in terms of the space that it provides for the people actually running the show. The Museum has a staff of some 1,700. But the top management is probably about six people, including the director.

Mr. Faulds: indicated assent.

Sir R, Thompson: I am glad to have the hon. Member for Smethwick (Mr. Faulds) with me on that. Nowhere in the commercial world or in the nationalised industries is so much work done in such inadequate and cramped, almost impossible, conditions by so few people.
Whatever we feel about charges, there is a better side to the package. I do not believe that we should have got the whole of the £11 million if the Treasury could not have been placated by some agreement to collect something at the time of admission.
As, for exemptions for special classes of people, of course we can all bat away

and make a lot of runs for the groups whom we want to help. I support what has been said about old-age pensioners. I have never understood why the production of a pension book in this kind of situation should present any great administrative inconvenience. It is a straightforward operation which has been adopted widely elsewhere.
I do not believe that education will take a savage knock because of the proposed charges. Organised parties will be admitted free of charge, and that kind of arrangement will take care of a large number of young people who wish to come. After that, a shilling for an individual visit is not asking a great deal when one thinks of the "bobs" which go on cinemas, ice-creams, and the other perfectly reasonable commodities on which children spend money. I think that hon. Members opposite tend to over-paint this picture when they describe it.

Mr. Jeffrey Archer: But surely my hon. Friend sees the difference. If a child buys an ice-cream for a shilling, it is because he wants the ice-cream. The great feature of children going to galleries is when they find themselves inside almost accidentally, and then want to go again.

Sir R. Thompson: I do not think that it is a valid reason against admission charges to say that it is important for a child to find himself inside a gallery accidentally. We need a more positive reason than that.
The other class for which I should like to see an exemption is the "supporters' club", by which I mean those people who, in return for subscriptions, obtain quite modest privileges at a museum or gallery. I must declare my interest at this point since I am chairman of the British Museum Society, which is just such a club. It does a great deal for the museum and attracts outside funds for it. It has a considerable rôle to play in that direction. Although I realise the administrative difficulty of creating classes of people who will not pay or who will pay less, the position of supporters' clubs, which are doing the Government's job for them in making museums more popular and sometimes contributing to their funds, might perhaps be reconsidered.
To the extent that this package provides additional funds for a sorely neglected sector of our national framework.


I consider that it is acceptable, and I intend to vote for it tonight.

6.20 p.m.

Mr. Thomas Torney: Although I do not possess the knowledge of the Arts of my hon. Friend the Member for Smethwick (Mr. Faulds), I have something else which has been mentioned by the hon. Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Robert Cooke), namely, grassroots experience. Unfortunately for me and my generation, I was too busy struggling for existence and the means to live when I was a child to be able to enjoy the appreciation of the Arts, museums, and so on, about which we are talking today. People from the grass roots like myself have one resolve: to try to make better opportunities for our children and our children's children. This is why the charge for museums is so appalling.
The Minister spoke eloquently, but she does not seem to have grasped one simple fact, which is tantamount to what happens within the Conservative Party. Hon. Members opposite cannot understand that what to them is only 10p or two shillings, to a working-class family in my constituency is a tremendous amount.
There is nothing quite like the wonderful museums and art galleries in London. People in the North as a whole love a day out in London. If a man and his wife bring their two children to London it will cost them 30p, or six shillings, to get into the museums or art galleries. That is approximately a third of a £. If the family takes its holidays, as most do, in July and August, it will cost 60p, or approximately two-thirds of a £. I say in all sincerity as a grass-roots person—you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, coined the phrase for me, and I am proud of it—that 30p or 60p out of the pocket of a working man coming from the North is an awful lot of money.
I believe—I think that educationists also believe—that parents should be encouraged to participate with their children in going into our museums and art galleries. The schools can whet their appetite, but this should be followed by parents being with the kiddies afterwards.
This charge is too much for the people I have described. They are in the same category as pensioners, about whom the

hon. Member for Louth (Mr. Jeffrey Archer) spoke. I feel sentimental about pensioners, and I also feel sentimental about the people in my constituency who have all these extras to pay. We are not dealing with workers in high-income groups. I represent a low-income area where men are threatened with redundancy and short-time working.
I should like to read part of a letter from a group of my constituents who were coming to London to visit the Houses of Parliament. I hope that we shall not put a charge on visiting this place. That would be the thin end of the wedge. My constituents apologise for cancelling their visit, and say:
This is due partly to increased costs. Since we first arranged this outing the train fare alone has been increased by 60p and meals en route have also increased, and we feel it is better to wait to a later date".
In other words, they could not afford to come. The right hon. Lady has made many thing more difficult. The increased costs of school meals, school milk, and so on, have contributed to the difficulties.
I am grateful for having had this opportunity to speak in the debate. I appeal to the Minister to think again about this miserable and niggardly charge which she is making.

6.24 p.m.

Mr. G. R. Strauss: I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Torney) was able to make his speech. He spoke with great knowledge and intimate experience of the problem. He made an important contribution to the debate.
I should also like to express my congratulations to the hon. Member for Louth (Mr. Jeffrey Archer) not only because I agreed with nearly everything that he said, but because he expressed it in an extraordinarily impressive and forceful way. It was one of the ablest speeches I have heard from the back benches on either side for a long time. I hope that the Minister will take note of what he said.
The right hon. Lady talked about the concession to old-age pensioners being only 5p instead of 10p. I think that she would have been wise, if she was to make a concession at all, to have gone the whole way and made entrance for them completely free. The right hon.


Lady knows that when a Minister or anybody else in this House makes a mistake and later makes an apology, it is always accepted if it is a full and complete one without any qualifications. While she was about it, it would have been worthwhile to make a complete concession to the old-age pensioners and to say that they could go in for nothing.
My only other comment on previous speeches concerns the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mr. Allason) who seems to be ignorant of the fact that the restoration departments in our national galleries—the National Gallery itself and the Tate—are better than any in the world and that our great pictures which have to be restored are always done and remarkably well, in those departments.

Mr. Allason: I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will give me credit. My criticism was about the lack of apprenticeship there.

Mr. Strauss: If the hon. Gentleman's point were that we have not got sufficient staff and that we should have more, I do not disagree with him at all.
The most surprising thing to me about the proposal to impose entrance charges is that it is sponsored by Lord Eccles. Contrary to my hon. Friend the Member for Smethwick (Mr. Faulds), who opened the debate in such a militant and pleasing way, I have always regarded Lord Eccles with a great deal of admiration. I thought that he was an enlightened Minister of Education. I know that he is devoted to the arts, particularly the visual arts, and has frequently spoken about making them more easily accessible to the public. He has written a book from which I could make many quotations to the House along those lines. He was also chairman of the trustees of the British Museum. When chairman, he expressed the view that there should be no entrance charges. That is not the view which he apparently now holds. We find him determined that entrance charges to our national museums and galleries should be imposed despite the vehement opposition of the majority of the trustees, curators and directors concerned.
What has brought about this change? The first reason appears to be purely political. Indeed, in the House of Lords,

on 16th December, he said: "The first and main reason for imposing charges is a political one. It is central to the policy on which we fought and won the General Election."
That is an extraordinary deduction from an election manifesto which promised greater freedom and a better life for everybody. Anyhow, that is his deduction. The noble Lord went on to say that there are too many subsidies being paid out and that they ought to be reduced. He accepts the general Conservative philosophy now, although in application to the arts it flouts all his previous declarations on the matter.
Then we have a second quite different reason, or excuse, for his change of policy. He says in effect that he was made to bring about this entrance charge by the Treasury. He passes the buck to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. This he explained in an interview with the Press a little time ago when he said that he was forced—I do not know whether he used the word "forced"—to bring about these entrance charges and put it to the Treasury
as a sprat to catch a mackerel".
It is significant that he used the word "sprat", indicaiting that he considers this an insignificant matter and of no importance.
Having justified himself on the ground that he was forced to do it by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he goes on to say "Look, it was worth it, I have got a lot more money for the museums and galleries which they need." We all agree that they need it, but there are two questions which we have now to ask ourselves. Has the noble Lord really got so much money for the museums and galleries? According to the White Paper, £11 million is to be spent over ten years. That is all. That is a petty amount compared with the amount spent on other matters, including the arts. I see that the hon. Gentleman is studying the White Paper. It says that the money spent will amount to £11 million by the late 'seventies. That is not a great amount of money.
The second question is, would not this amount have been available from the Exchequer if this charge had not been imposed? The answer is that it most certainly would. Year after year the Labour Government substantially increased the


the amount of money available to the arts, to the Arts Council, and to other art purposes, and it is ridiculous to suggest that the money that will be provided by these increased charges would not have been made available automatically from the Exchequer without breaching the long and honourable tradition that we have in this country of free entry to our national museums and galleries. That argument is therefore nonsense.
There have been many financial crises in this country over the last 100 to 150 years, when the Exchequer has said that it is short of money, that it has to raise taxation or make various fiscal squeezes. Never on any occasion, except once when the suggestion was quickly withdrawn, during this period has it ever been suggested by any Conservative or Liberal Government that the arts should be taxed or that money should be raised from the public who want to view the arts. This is the first time that that has happened, and I hope that the Government and the public will bear that in mind.
It is clear that this policy will mostly affect the poorer sections of the community. Those who have sufficient resources will pay happily and continue to visit museums as they did before. For that reason the proposed tax is clearly divisive, as we say in the Motion, and because it is divisive we think that it is bad. Moreover, in this regrettably materialist age, is it not wrong to put any curb whatsoever on the public's access to our historic and artistic treasures which are an invaluable key to unlocking the non-material side of man?
In defence of the Government's proposal it is said that charges are imposed on visitors in European galleries and museums. That is a partial truth. In many galleries a charge is imposed, while in many others it is not, but I hope that it is not going to be argued as one reason for joining the Common Market that we should accept all the habits and customs of our European neighbours, however poor we may think they are compared with ours. Because they do something, that is no reason why we should imitate them. We have to ask ourselves whether it is better. Is it? Will it advantage either the museums or the people who visit them?
The Government are not putting our museum home visitors in the same posi

tion as those in Europe, but in a far worse one. The authorities in all the European countries and towns which impose charges realise that it is desirable that their museums should be available free on at least one day a week for those who are too poor to pay the entrance charges which visitors from abroad are able to pay. I do not know them all, but the Louvre and the Uffizi Gallery have such a day on which people who find it difficult to afford the entrance fee can go with their children free to enjoy the great works of art in those galleries. This Government is depriving the poorer people of this country of the ability to go to our museums free of charge on any day, and when they suggest that they are putting us on a par with European galleries, they are misleading us. They are not. They are putting the poorer sections of the population in a worse position than those in Europe.
It is argued, too, that the effect of these charges is unlikely to bring about any reduction in the number of visitors. It is prayed in support of that argument that although there has been an increase in the entrance fee for the Tower of London, the number of visitors has increased. It is said that in spite of entrance fees to many other museums in the country—such as the Bowes Museum—the number of visitors has increased. As long as the number of visitors to this country continues to increase, so will the number of visitors to the Tower of London, the Bowes Museum, and similar places. There can be no doubt about that. The point is, to what extent will this charge have an effect on the ordinary member of the British public? To what extent will it prevent our own people from going to museums and galleries?
We have certain evidence about this which has been hinted at already. It has been said, rather as a justification for the Government's proposals, that at one time the Tate Gallery and the National Gallery imposed charges on two days a week. It is therefore suggested that no new principle is involved, but the answer to that is that those galleries imposed charges for the very purpose of keeping the public out—and they succeeded in doing that—so that students should then have the galleries to themselves. It follows surely that if charges are again imposed the public will again be kept out.
The figures for the Tate Gallery were remarkable. Before the war, on the ordinary days when entrance was free, the number of visitors was between 2,000 and 3,000. On the days when an entrance fee of 6d. was charged, the number of visitors dropped to between 200 and 300. There are examples of what happened in other places recently. At Kenwood and elsewhere, after charges were introduced there was a considerable drop in the number of visitors.
No one knows to what extent the number of visitors will fall after charges are imposed. I do not think that the charges will have any effect on the number of tourists who will visit the galleries and museums, but what about the home population? No one, not even the Minister, would question that there will be some fall in their numbers. The right hon. Lady may say that their numbers will not decrease by much, but I maintain that if there is any fall at all in the numbers of our own people visiting our museums and galleries it will be a disgrace and a shame, and the proposal ought to be dropped.
It must be borne in mind that it is not only the really poor people who will be unable to visit our museums and galleries. Many people live on the fringe of poverty. Although in employment, they get low wages, and they, and those in receipt of pensions, will at any rate be discouraged, if not prevented, from spending 5p or 10p to visit a museum. They will hesitate before doing what perhaps they do now during their lunch hour, spend a quiet quarter of an hour in a museum. They will hesitate to make such visits if they have to pay an entrance fee. Many people get great pleasure out of a quick visit to a museum to look at one or more masterpieces which they particularly like. This kind of visit, important and enjoyable, will inevitably be discouraged by this reactionary proposal.
The effect of this charge on unaccompanied children is bound to be considerable. I suggest to the right hon. Lady that when she says that the important thing is that parties of children from schools will be allowed in free, she misses the point altogether. When those parties of children visit the museum, they should

be talked to by some knowledgeable and sympathetic person about the pictures and what they stand for, and what the artist was seeking to convey—someone who generally will excite their interest. Unless this happens, and unless the children come back later of their own free will, a great deal of the value of the museums is destroyed. But as a result of the Government's proposals, the entire lives of some children may be impoverished by their being unable to have their aesthetic senses awakened in their early and formative years by quiet visits to galleries and museums during their leisure time.
The Government will of course defeat our Motion, but I believe that if there were a free vote the Government's proposal would be defeated. Hon. Members opposite would vote in large numbers against the imposition of these charges, not only because they are against it in principle, as many of them are, but because they know that this policy is antagonising the whole art world—an important and influential section of the community. For the sake of a miniscule contribution to the Treasury, this proposal is irretrievably tarnishing the Government's image as friends of the arts.
The next move in this controversy will be the introduction of the enabling Bill. That, of course, will be strenuously fought at every stage. Then, the Government will no doubt force the trustees, against their will, to impose the charges. The trustees will be in a difficult position. Their first duty is, by definition, to further the interests of the galleries and museums which they serve and the members of the public who patronise those galleries. With rare exceptions, all the trustees and the directors and curators are convinced that the Government's proposal is gravely damaging to the interests which they are there to defend. They conceive it their duty to make the museums and galleries more attractive and accessible to the public and not less so.
Least of all do they relish the prospect of being made reluctant unpaid tax collectors for the Chancellor of the Exchequer—collectors of a tax on knowledge and culture. But they will be forced, no doubt, to accept the Government's orders, however much they dislike them. They will then have at least


this consolation—the prospect of the reversal of this mean, philistine, doctrinaire and altogether despicable policy by the next Labour Government.

6.43 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. William van Straubenzee): It is unnecessary for me, and in view of our positions it would be impertinent on my part to welcome back the right hon. Member for Vauxhall (Mr. Strauss). I do not know what the phrase is when a right hon. Gentleman returns to the Dispatch Box, but I am sure that many hon. Members on both sides are glad to see him back. I am sure also that they particularly appreciate the vigour with which he fairly and properly prosecuted his case and the much more telling way in which he did so by not descending to the personalities aimed at my right hon. Friend which were the distinguishing feature of the opening speech for the Opposition, that of the hon. Member for Smethwick (Mr. Faulds). We noted the way in which he carefully disengaged himself from the tone of his hon. Friend's speech, which was a wise and proper thing.
I was glad deliberately to give up time for a necessarily short speech by the hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Torney) and I hope that, for that reason, I shall be permitted to deal as briskly as I may with at any rate some of the points which have been raised.
I must deal first with the assertion that there is some question of principle involved, that some great new principle is being established or some very ancient one is being breached. In fact, as hon. Members on both sides have said, a large number of the galleries and museums already make a charge. I am not the only hon. Member who has recently enjoyed the collection of Dutch pictures available to us at the Queen's Gallery and which, if any hon. Member has not seen it, is well worth taking time off to see. But one pays 15p to do it.
Visitors who go to one of the great historical monuments of the country, such as the Tower of London, with its 2,300,000 visitors a year, pay 20p throughout a long summer. If that is not sufficient, in that it applies only to London, I take the Bowes Museum which the right hon. Gentleman mentioned, which makes a

charge of 10p. That is made by the Durham County Council, which I am sure is a very estimable body, but which lacks one thing—it does not have an overwhelming Tory majority.
So this is something which is established. To take another case, tomorrow morning, I am to enter into what I am sure will be a most amicable and brisk discussion with the right hon. Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Central (Mr. Edward Short) on the Government's admirable proposals on the subject of school milk. I suspect that, when we begin that amicable discussion, we shall hear mention of the county borough of Merthyr Tydfil, which has been very much in the news in this connection. That borough has an admirable gallery and museum, for which it makes an entrance charge of 2½p. I am sure it is an admirable place, but it has yet to be conquered by the Tory voters. That will come, but it is not yet.
Across the board, institution by institution and political persuasion by political persuasion, there are charges. Precisely the same arguments which have been adduced, I am sure deeply sincerely—I do not question their sincerity—for example, about the young and the old, apply to the Bowes Museum, or that in Merthyr Tydfil, taking two examples at random, as they do to the others about which we have spoken.
Or is it true, as the right hon. Gentleman argued very persuasively, that, where great national institutions are concerned, there is a great principle at stake? This point has been made before, but it must be repeated. A number of these great national institutions did make charges before. I am coming to the reason why and the right hon. Gentleman may be surprised to find that I agree with a lot of what he said on that point. But I am now dealing with the issue of principle. Is some principle being breached? The answer, historically, and demonstrably on his own facts, is that, before the war, there was a charge at the National Gallery, the Tate Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery—

Mr. John Mendelson: So what?

Mr. van Straubenzee: I am dealing with the point of principle. I know that it is very irritating, particularly for the


hon. Member for Penistone (Mr. Mendelson), who intervened from a sitting position, to have his arguments whipped from under him, but he must learn, as the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) said, that this is the place where people say things with which one does not necessarily agree. I am saying this and saying it very firmly.
It is perfectly true that the object in those days was to keep people out, and the charge succeeded in that object. It is true that if there is a charge on only one or two days a week, as was the case with the pre-war 6d., one will succeed in keeping people out, and in that the right hon. Gentleman, as one might expect of one who understands the subject, was dead right. When the pre-war charge was made, attendance fell by about a quarter. This is so when one makes a charge on only two days. Now, however, the object is different: it is to add to resources available and thereby to add to the available facilities and the possibilities of people being able to make visits.
We have to note that when recently, to take the latest example, there is a special exhibition—and I take the point made by the hon. Lady the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Renée Short)—of the costumes of Henry VIII and his wives, with a charge of 30p a time, 25,000 people a day were prepared to make that payment.

Mr. Faulds: rose—

Mr. van Straubenzee: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not think me discourteous if I do not give way, but I have already cut the time available to me.
That example showed clearly that there are, and one rejoices in it, many people who are prepared to make this sort of payment. It also shows that if one uses imagination and couples the museum with, for example, an effective television programme, it is remarkable what one can do. But it is a fact that many of our museums and galleries today are simply not equipped to do this sort of work.
I hope and believe that hon. Members are pleased with the reductions for old age pensioners announced by my right hon. Friend. I want to make this plea:

I hope that I shall not be pressed from either side of the House, though I should absolutely understand the reasons for it, to make a further concession in respect of those pensioners who are receiving supplementary payments. Under both Governments we have moved to trying to do away with the identification of such old age pensioners and it would be, not a forward, but a retrograde step to require them to identify themselves.
I know that there are arguments which hon. Gentlemen opposite advance sincerely, but to them I reply that, if the charge overall is to be kept at a figure which, without question, surprised and pleased the museum world by being much lower than it had expected, a basic charge of 10p, the possibility of widespread reductions and exemptions is severely limited. I believe that my right hon. Friend's announcement today was very much in accord with the general approach towards payments by old age pensioners, and that is something with which everybody will be pleased.
I must deal with the argument persuasively made by my hon. Friend the Member for Louth (Mr. Jeffrey Archer). I am grateful to him for his kindly references to what he called my forbearance with him. I shall take an enlarged drink from him afterwards for what he alleges he is to do. My noble Friend will look carefully at the possibility of some kind of further exemption for "friends" of institutions. But I must say that my hon. Friend with his great experience will instantly realise that if there were to be anything like this, there would be the administrative difficulties mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, South (Sir R. Thompson), who speaks with great experience. As my hon. Friend will at once understand, it would clearly have to be coupled with at least a minimum charge for being a "friend" and this in turn would require that we should inject ourselves into the "friends" organisation in a way in which, I suspect, my hon. Friend would prefer not to have us.
I was asked about free days. I do not know whether the right hon. Member for Vauxhall knows that there is a considerable division of opinion in the museum and gallery world about free days.

Mr. Strauss: Mr. Strauss indicated assent.

Mr. van Straubenzee: I see the right hon. Gentleman nodding assent; he is


closely in touch with it. He will also agree that there is considerable doubt among museum and gallery authorities about whether they could cope with the free-day concept. I understand that the majority view is that they would prefer not to have to do so.
I must refer to the nature of the legislation. Some play was made with this in the speech of the hon. Member for Smethwick. I make no point of this, but there was a moment in our discussions earlier this year, when he could not be with us for reasons which we all regret, when he would have noticed, for example, my answer to his right hon. Friend on 4th March, 1971—

Mr. Faulds: Referring to the hon. Gentleman's statement on 15th February.

Mr. van Straubenzee: This was even better, if I may say so—when I made absolutely clear the nature of the legislation.
However, I ought to make it expressly clear that the request to make charges comes from the Government; the Government take full responsibility for making the request. The responsibility for the legislation, which is necessary for only four of the institutions, lies upon the Government, and the Government take full responsibility for it. I must therefore say that if I were Sir Robert Sainsbury and were preparing a statement, I should say that as a trustee of such a body as that I should not for a moment do other than agree with the Government's request.
As I listened to the hon. Member for Smethwick—and it was genuinely a splendid performance, a matinee, indeed, to remember—

Mr. Faulds: What is wrong with that?

Mr. van Straubenzee: This is not a matinee, that is why—my mind went back to a speech from this side of the House when the present Opposition were the Government and when we were debating a request by our predecessors that the universities should double, or sharply increase, the fees for overseas

students. There was no legislation; it was merely a request by the Government.

It was not considered at all improper that it should be done in that way by the Labour Government, and that was quite recent. There was an abstention even on that occasion. I hope that it will not be as catching today as it then was, although the similarities are close. The hon. Gentleman cannot say that what is proper for him, what is entirely right for dealing with an independent university by his Government, is improper when done in similar circumstances by the present Government.

There is a serious comment to make about it. As I understood the hon. Gentleman, as he ended he said that he would be watching the trustees' reactions to this request from the Tory Government. I assume that he means by that that he is threatening them, and if ever the time comes when he is—and he calmly assumed that he would be—Minister for the Arts—

Mr. Faulds: Mr. Faulds indicated assent.

Mr. van Straubenzee: The hon. Gentleman announces it to the House, and the blanches on the faces behind him are a joy to see. If he did so say that he would presumably deal with them in some determined way, that is a threat, and—

Mr. Faulds: Did the hon. Gentleman follow the next passage?

Mr. van Straubenzee: A withdrawal in the final moment of the debate from the hon. Gentleman on that point.

On the arguments which we have adduced, I ask the House to reject the Motion.

Question put,
That this House deplores the imposition of entrance charges to the national museums and galleries which will diminish educational opportunities, particularly for the young and old; and declares its opposition to such charges, which will further the Government's clear intention of creating a divided nation:—

The House divided: Ayes 266, Noes 296.

Division No. 385.]
AYES
[6.59 p.m.


Abse, Leo
Archer, Peter (Rowley Regis)
Bagier, Gordon A. T.


Albu, Austen
Armstrong, Ernest
Barnes, Michael


Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)
Ashton, Joe
Barnett, Joel


Allen, Scholefield
Atkinson, Norman
Beaney, Alan




Benn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood
Hannan, William (G'gow, Maryhill)
Mulley, Rt. Hn. Frederick


Bennett, James (Glasgow, Bridgeton)
Hardy, Peter
Murray, Ronald King


Bidwell, Sydney
Harper, Joseph
Ogden, Eric


Bishop, E. S.
Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)
O'Halloran, Michael


Blenkinsop, Arthur
Hart, Rt. Hn. Judith
O'Malley, Brian


Boardman, H. (Leigh)
Hattersley, Roy
Oram, Bert


Booth, Albert
Healey, Rt. Hn. Denis
Orbach, Maurice


Boyden, James (Bishop Auckland)
Heffer, Eric S.
Orme, Stanley


Bradley, Tom
Hilton, W. S.
Oswald, Thomas


Brown, Bob (N'c'tle-upon-Tyne, W.)
Horam, John
Owen, Dr. David (Plymouth, Sutton)


Brown, Hugh D. (G'gow, Provan)
Houghton, Rt. Hn. Douglas
Paget, R. T.


Brown, Ronald (Shoreditch &amp; F'bury)
Howell, Denis (Small Heath)
Palmer, Arthur


Buchan, Norman
Huckfield, Leslie
Pannell, Rt. Hn. Charles


Buchanan, Richard (G'gow, Sp'burn)
Hughes, Rt. Hn. Cledwyn (Anglesey)
Pardoe, John


Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)
Hughes, Mark (Durham)
Parker, John (Dagenham)


Callaghan, Rt. Hn. James
Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen, N.)
Parry, Robert (Liverpool, Exchange


Campbell, I. (Dunbartonshire, W.)
Hughes, Roy (Newport)
Pavitt, Laurie


Cant, R. B.
Hunter, Adam
Peart, Rt. Hn. Fred


Carmichael, Neil
Irvine, Rt. Hn. Sir Arthur (Edge Hill)
Pendry, Tom


Carter, Ray (Birmingh'm, Northfield)
Janner, Greville
Pentland, Norman


Carter-Jones, Lewis (Eccles)
Jay, Rt. Hn. Douglas
Prescott, John


Castle, Rt. Hn. Barbara
Jeger, Mrs. Lena (H'b'n&amp;St. P'cras, S.)
Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)


Clark, David (Colne Valley)
Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)
Price, William (Rugby)


Cocks, Michael (Bristol, S.)
Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechford)
Probert, Arthur


Cohen, Stanley
Johnson, James (K'ston-on-Hull, W.)
Rankin, John


Concannon, J. D.
Johnson, Walter (Derby, S.)
Reed, D. (Sedgefield)


Conlan, Bernard
Jones, Barry (Flint, E.)
Rees, Merlyn (Leeds, S.)


Corbet, Mrs. Freda
Jones, Dan (Burnley)
Rhodes, Geoffrey


Cox, Thomas (Wandsworth, C.)
Jones. Rt. Hn. Sir Elwyn (W. Ham, S.)
Richard, Ivor


Crawshaw, Richard
Jones, Gwynoro (Carmarthen)
Roberts, Albert (Normanton)


Cronin, John
Jones, T. Alec (Rhondda, W.)
Robertson, John (Paisley)


Crosland, Rt. Hn. Anthony
Judd, Frank
Roderick, Caerwyn E.(Br'c'n&amp;R'dnor)


Crossman, Rt. Hn. Richard
Kaufman, Gerald
Rodgers, William (Stockton-on-Tees)


Cunningham, G. (Islington, S. W.)
Kelley, Richard
Roper, John


Dalyell, Tarn
Kerr, Russell
Rose, Paul B.


Darling, Rt. Hn. George
Kinnock, Neil
Ross, Rt. Hn. William (Kilmarnock)


Davidson, Arthur
Lamble, David
Sheldon, Robert (Ashton-under-Lyne)


Davies, Denzil (Llanelly)
Lamond, James
Shore, Rt. Hn. Peter (Stepney)


Davies, G. Elfed (Rhondda, E.)
Latham, Arthur
Short, Rt. Hn. Edward (N'c'tle-u-Tyne)


Davies, Ifor (Gower)
Lawson, George
Short, Mrs. Renée (W'hampton. N. E.)


Davis, Clinton (Hackney, C.)
Leadbitter, Ted
Silkin, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford)


Davis, Terry (Bromsgrove)
Lee, Rt. Hn. Frederick
Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)


Deakins, Eric
Leonard, Dick
Sillars, James


de Freitas, Rt. Hn. Sir Geoffrey
Lestor, Miss Joan
Silverman, Julius


Delargy, H. J.
Lever, Rt. Hn. Harold
Skinner, Dennis


Dell, Rt. Hn. Edmund
Lewis, Arthur (W. Ham, N.)
Small, William


Dempsey, James
Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)
Smith, John (Lanarkshire, N.)


Doig, Peter
Lipton, Marcus
Spearing, Nigel


Douglas, Dick (Stirlingshire, E.)
Lomas, Kenneth
Spriggs, Leslie


Driberg, Tom
Loughlin, Charles
Stallard, A. W.


Duffy, A. E. P.
Lyon, Alexander W. (York)
Steel, David


Dunnett, Jack
Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson
Stewart, Donald (Western Isles)


Eadie, Alex
McBride, Neil
Stewart, Rt. Hn. Michael (Fulham)


Edelman, Maurice
McCartney, Hugh
Stoddart, David (Swindon)


Edwards, Robert (Bilston)
McElhone, Frank
Stonehouse, Rt. Hn. John


Ellis, Tom
McGuire, Michael
Strang, Gavin


English, Michael
Mackenzie, Gregor
Strauss, Rt. Hn. G. R.


Evans, Fred
Mackie, John
Summerskill, Hn. Dr. Shirley


Faulds, Andrew
Mackintosh, John P.
Swain, Thomas


Fisher, Mrs. Doris (B'ham, Ladywood)
Maclennan, Robert
Taverne, Dick


Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)
McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, C.)
Thomas, Rt. Hn. George (Cardiff, W.)


Foley, Maurice
McNamara, J. Kevin
Thomas, Jeffrey (Abertillery)


Foot, Michael
Mahon, Simon (Bootle)
Thomson, Rt. Hn. G. (Dundee, E.)


Ford, Ben
Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)
Thorpe, Rt. Hn. Jeremy


Forrester, John
Mallalieu. J. P. W. (Huddersfield, E.)
Tinn, James


Fraser, John (Norwood)
Marks, Kenneth
Tomney, Frank


Freeson, Reginald
Marquand, David
Torney, Tom


Galpern, Sir Myer
Marsden, F.
Tuck, Raphael


Garrett, W. E.
Marshall, Dr. Edmund
Urwin, T. W.


Gilbert, Dr. John
Mason, Rt. Hn. Roy
Varley, Eric G.


Ginsburg David
Mayhew, Christopher
Wainwright, Edwin


Golding, John
Meacher, Michael
Walden, Brian (B'm'ham, All Saints)


Gordon Walker, Rt. Hn. P. C.
Mellish, Rt. Hn. Robert
Walker, Harold (Doncaster)


Gourtay, Harry
Mendelson, John
Wallace, George


Grant, George (Morpeth)
Mikardo, Ian
Watkins, David


Grant, John D. (Islington, E.)
Millan, Bruce
Weitzman, David


Griffiths, Eddie (Brightside)
Miller, Dr. M. S.
Wellbeloved, James


Griffiths, Will (Exchange)
Milne, Edward (Blyth)
Wells, William (Walsall, N.)


Grimond, Rt. Hn. J.
Mitchell, R. C. (S'hampton, Itchen)
White, James (Glasgow, Pollok)


Gunter, Rt. Hn. R. J.
Molloy, William
Whitehead, Phillip


Hamilton, James (Bothwell)
Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)
Whitlock, William


Hamilton, William (Fife, W.)
Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)
Willey, Rt. Hn. Frederick


Hamling, William
Moyle, Roland
Williams, Alan (Swansea, w.)







Williams, Mrs. Shirley (Hitchin)
Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Williams, W. T. (Warrington)
Woof, Robert
Mr. Alan Fitch and


Wilson, Alexander (Hamilton)

Mr. James A. Dunn.




NOES


Adley, Robert
Eyre, Reginald
Knox, David


Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)
Farr, John
Lambton, Antony


Allason, James (Hemel Hempstead)
Fell, Anthony
Lane, David


Amery, Rt. Hn. Julian
Fenner, Mrs. Peggy
Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry


Astor, John
Fidler, Michael
Le Marchant, Spencer


Atkins, Humphrey
Finsberg, Geoffrey (Hampstead)
Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)


Awdry, Daniel
Fisher, Nigel (Surbiton)
Lloyd, Rt. Hn. Geoffrey (Sut'nC'dfielc


Baker, Kenneth (St. Marylebone)
Fletcher-Cooke, Charles
Lloyd, Ian (P'tsm'th, Langstone)


Baker, W. H. K. (Banff)
Fookes, Miss Janet
Longden, Gilbert


Barber, Rt. Hn. Anthony
Fortescue, Tim
Loveridge, John


Beamish, Col. Sir Tufton
Foster, Sir John
McAdden, Sir Stephen


Bell, Ronald
Fowler, Norman
Mac Arthur, Ian


Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gosport)
Fox, Marcus
McCrindle, R. A.


Benyon, W.
Fry, Peter
McLaren, Martin


Berry, Hn. Anthony
Galbraith, Hn. T. G.
Maclean, Sir Fitzroy


Biffen, John
Gardner, Edward
Macmillan, Maurice (Farnham)


Biggs-Davison, John
Gibson-Watt, David
McNair-Wilson, Michael


Blaker, Peter
Gilmour, Ian (Norfolk, C.)
McNair-Wilson, Patrick (New Fores


Boardman, Tom (Leicester, S. W.)
Gilmour, Sir John (Fife, E.)
Maddan, Martin


Body, Richard
Glyn, Dr. Alan
Madel, David


Boscawen, Robert
Godber, Rt. Hn. J. B.
Maginnis, John E.


Bossom, Sir Clive
Goodhart, Phillip
Marples, Rt. Hn. Ernest


Bowden, Andrew
Goodhew, Victor
Marten, Neil


Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hn. John
Gorst, John
Mather, Carol


Braine, Bernard
Gower, Raymond
Maude, Angus


Bray, Ronald
Grant, Anthony (Harrow, C.)
Maudling, Rt. Hn. Reginald


Brewis, John
Gray, Hamish
Mawby, Ray


Brinton, Sir Tatton
Green, Alan
Maxweil-Hyslop, R. J.


Brocklebank-Fowler, Christopher
Grieve, Percy
Meyer, Sir Anthony


Brown, Sir Edward (Bath)
Grylls, Michael
Mills, Peter (Torrington)


Bruce-Gardyne, J.
Gummer, Selwyn
Mitchell, Lt. -Col. C. (Aberdeenshire, w)


Bryan, Paul
Gurden, Harold
Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)


Buchanan-Smith, Alick (Angus, N&amp;M)
Hall, Miss Joan (Keighley)
Moate, Roger


Buck, Antony
Hall, John (Wycombe)
Molyneaux, James


Bullus, Sir Eric
Hall-Davis, A. G. F.
Money, Ernie


Burden, F. A.
Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)
Monks, Mrs. Connie


Butler, Adam (Bosworth)
Hannam, John (Exeter)
Montgomery, Fergus


Campbell, Rt, Hn. G.(Moray&amp;Nalrn)
Harrison, Brian (Maldon)
Morgan, Geraint (Denbigh)


Carlisle, Mark
Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)
Morgan-Giles, Rear-Adm.


Carr, Rt. Hn. Robert
Haselhurst, Alan
Morrison, Charles (Devizes)


Cary, Sir Robert
Hastings, Stephen
Mudd, David


Channon, Paul
Havers, Michael
Murton, Oscar


Chapman, Sydney
Hawkins, Paul
Nabarro, Sir Gerald


Chataway, Rt. Hn. Christopher
Hayhoe, Barney
Neave, Airey


Chichester-Clark, R.
Heseltine, Michael
Nicholls, Sir Harmar


Churchill, W. S.
Hicks, Robert
Noble, Rt. Hn. Michael


Clark, William (Surrey, E.)
Higgins, Terence L.
Normanton, Tom


Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)
Hiley, Joseph
Nott, John


Clegg, Walter
Hill, John E. B. (Norfolk, S.)
Onslow, Cranley


Cockeram, Erie
Hill, James (Southampton, Test)
Orr, Capt. L. P. S.


Cooke, Robert
Holland, Philip
Osborn John


Coombs, Derek
Holt, Miss Mary
Owen, Idris (Stockport, N.)


Cooper, A. E.
Hordrn, Peter
Page, Graham (Crosby)


Cordle, John
Hornby, Richard
Page, John (Harrow, W.)


Cormack, Patrick
Hornsby-Smith. Rt. Hn. Dame Patricia
Parkinson, Cecil (Enfield, W.)


Costain, A. P.
Howe, Hn. Sir Geoffrey (Reigate)
Peel, John


Critchley, Julian
Howell, David (Guildford)
Percival, Ian


Crouch, David
Howell, Ralph (Norfolk, N.)
Peyton, Rt. Hn. John


Crowder, F. P.
Hunt, John
Pink, R. Bonner


Curran, Charies
Hutchison, Michael Clark
Pounder, Rafton


Davies, Rt. Hn. John (Knutsford)
Iremonger, T. L.
Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch


d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry
Irvine, Bryant Godman
Price, David (Eastleigh)


d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Maj.-Gen. James
James, David
Prior, Rt. Hn. J. M. L.


Dean, Paul
Jenkin, Patrick (Woodford)
Proudfoot, Wilfred


Deedes, Rt. Hn. W. F.
Johnson Smith, G. (E. Grinstead)
Pym, Rt. Hn. Francis


Digby, Simon Wingfield
Jone", Arthur (Northants, S.)
Quennell, Miss J. M.


Dixon, Piers
Jopling, Michael
Raison, Timothy


Dodds-Parker, Douglas
Joseph, Rt. Hn. Sir Keith
Redmond, Robert


Douglas-Home, Rt. Hn. Sir Alec
Kelfett, Mrs. Elaine
Reed, Laurance (Bolton, E.)


Drayson, G. B.
Kilfedder, James
Rees, Peter (Dover)


du Cann, Rt. Hn. Edward
Kimball, Marcus
Rees-Davies, W. R.


Dykes, Hugh
King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)
Renton, Rt. Hn. Sir David


Eden, Sir John
King, Tom (Bridgwater)
Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon


Edwards, Nicholas (Pembroke)
Kinsey, J. R.
Ridley, Hn. Nicholas


Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)
Kirk, Peter
Ridsdale, Julian


Elliott, R. W. (N'c'tle-upon-Tyne, N.)
Kitson, Timothy
Roberts, Michael (Cardiff, N)


Emery, Peter
Knight, Mrs. Jill
Roberts, Wyn (Conway)







Rodgers, Sir John (Sevenoaks)
Stuttaford, Dr. Tom
Walker, Rt. Hn. Peter (Worcester)


Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey)
Sutcliffe, John
Walker-Smith, Rt. Hn. Sir Derek


Rost, Peter
Tapsell, Peter
Wall, Patrick


Royle, Anthony
Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)
Walters, Dennis


Russell, Sir Ronald
Taylor, Edward M.(G'gow, Cathcart)
Ward, Dame Irene


St, John-Stevas, Norman
Taylor, Frank (Moss Side)
Warren, Kenneth


Scott, Nicholas
Taylor, Robert (Croydon, N. W.)
Weatherill, Bernard


Sharpies, Richard
Tebbit, Norman
Wells, John (Maidstone)


Shaw, Michael, (Sc'b'gh &amp; Whitby)
Temple, John M.
White, Roger (Gravesend)


Shelton, William (Clapham)
Thatcher, Rt. Hn. Mrs. Margaret
Whitelaw, Rt. Hn. William


Simeons, Charles
Thomas, John Stradling (Monmouth)
Wiggin, Jerry


Sinclair, Sir George
Thomas, Rt. Hn. Peter (Hendon, S.)
Wilkinson, John


Skeet, T. H. H.
Thompson, Sir Richard (Croydon, S.)
Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick


Smith, Dudley (W'wick &amp; L'mington)
Tilmey, John
Wood, Rt. Hn. Richard


Soref, Harold
Trafford, Dr. Anthony
Woodhouse, Hn. Christopher


Speed, Keith
Trew, Peter
Woodnutt, Mark


Spence, John
Tugendhat, Christopher
Worsley, Marcus


Sproat, lain
Turton, Rt. Hn. Sir Robin
Wylie, Rt. Hn. N. R.


Stainton, Keith
van Straubenzee, W. R.
Younger, Hn. George


Stanbrook, Ivor
Vaughan, Dr. Gerard



Stewart-Smith, D. G. (Belper)
Vickers, Dame Joan
TELLERS FOR THE NOES


Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir M.
Waddington, David
Mr. Jasper More and


Stokes, John
Walder, David (Clitheroe)
Mr. Hector Monro.

PRIVATE BUSINESS

MERSEY DOCKS AND HARBOUR [MONEY] (No. 2) (By Order)

Queen's Recommendation having been signified—

7.11 p.m.

The Minister for Transport Industries (Mr. John Peyton): I beg to move,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session providing for the reconstitution of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board as a Company and for the reorganisation of the capital of the Board, it is expedient to authorise—


(a) any provision of the said Act which, so far as the said Act distinguishes between loans made to the Board before 27th November 1970, and loans made later, treats loans made to the Board under section 11 of the Harbours Act 1964 in pursuance of any agreement made by a Minister with the Board before 27th November 1970 as a loan made before that date, irrespective of the date on which the loan is in fact made; and
(b) any provision of the said Act which enables a person who on 12th February 1971 held securities of the Board which have matured before the end of a moratorium period, being a person who has held those securities at all times since that date and who is for the time being entitled to income tax relief under sections 6 or 7 of the Income and Corporation Taxes Act 1970, to obtain the redemption of one-half of his holding up to a maximum payment to each such person of £500;

and that it is expedient to authorise any loss to public funds arising from the making of any such provision.
This Money Resolution is necessary to meet the requirements of the Select Committee. In paragraphs 4 and 5 of its Special Report, the Committee stated its

belief that the Amendments which it had itself been free to make did not go far enough and it suggested two more.
First, it suggested an Amendment to the effect that Government loans agreed to before 27th November, 1970 but actually made after that date should be subject to the same write-down as other debt existing before that date. Second, the Select Committee was concerned that the Board should be obliged to repay to any security holder entitled to small income tax relief up to 50 per cent. of the nominal value of his holding held at 12th February this year and due for redemption during the moratorium period, this being subject to a limit of £500. This Amendment could not be included in the Bill without a new Money Resolution because it was contrary to the terms of the old one.
The Money Resolution is proposed simply in order to meet the wishes expressed by the Select Committee.

Mr. Edmund Dell: Will the right hon. Gentleman give a further explanation of paragraph (b) of the Money Resolution? The Resolution enables payments to be made in certain circumstances to those entitled to certain income tax relief, but it is put down by the Government. Does that imply—or does it not have to imply, since it is put down by the Government—a preparedness on the part of the Government in certain circumstances to pay out this money?
My understanding may be wrong, but, surely, if the new company could pay out this money, or could be relied on to be able to pay it out, this would not be


a requirement falling on the Government. If my interpretation of the matter be right, in what circumstances do the Government foresee their having to pay out this money, and, in that event, how many people do they think will be involved and how much money might be paid out?

Mr. Peyton: If I may speak again at this point, the Money Resolution is required only because the existing Money Resolution would not allow the Amendment to which I have referred and for which the Select Committee had asked. As there is a possibility that payments under the Amendment might diminish the sums which the Government could ultimately expect to receive in the way of repayment of that part of their loan which had been written down, it is necessary also in that respect. It means none of the consequences which the right hon. Gentleman has implied or suggested.

7.15 p.m.

Mr. Michael English: First, I thank the Minister for bringing forward this Money Resolution. One does not look a gift horse in the mouth, but I must make two points about it. I shall not speak now about the main issues raised by the Bill, but the very reason why the Money Resolution has to be moved is that it widens the previous Money Resolution. What the right hon. Gentleman did not explain, however, is that it is somewhat unusual to have a Government Money Resolution so strictly controlling the contents of a supposedly Private Bill.
One of the points which I shall hope to make later is that this Bill should have been not a Private Bill but a Hybrid Bill. The very fact that this Money Resolution has to be moved illustrates that.
Second, although the Department of the Environment and the Treasury have kindly taken up the point made by the Committee, and although all four members of the Committee, including two loyal members of the Government party, would have gone this far, two of us—as we showed on a Division—would have gone considerably further. In the event, the Department has taken up the minimum view, the view that not even two loyal members of the Conservative

Party were prepared to reject. Hence the Special Report.
First, this Money Resolution provides that the Government do not have priority for about £1·2 million, which in the Bill as drafted and presented to the Committee they were, in effect, asking for through the Board. The reason for that is that they were asking for priority not for money which they had voluntarily lent after 27th November, 1970 but for moneys which they were contractually obliged to pay to the Board under agreements dating from before the highly relevant date when the Board, in effect, wanted to liquidate itself.
I must comment on the appalling arrogance—as I described it in Committee—of the Report by the Secretary of State for the Environment on this point. In paragraph 8, it was said that the Government were prepared to relinquish the priority of ranking referred to in paragraph 6. There was no priority of ranking. There is no priority of ranking until this Bill is passed by both Houses. The Government were prepared to relinquish at the beginning of the Committee stage a priority position as a creditor which, frankly, they simply had not got and which they would never have had, had they not, in effect, forced the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board into coming to the House with this Bill putting the Government in that special position. For that reason, I shall say that it would have been better had the Bill been a Public Bill or, no doubt, a Hybrid Bill, under which the Minister would have been forced to come to the House and explain the reasons for the decision.
I accept that the Minister is merely carrying out the decision, as I believe it to be, of the Government as a whole, but the fact remains that we have this highly unusual situation necessitating this Money Resolution. Among other things, at the time the Bill was drafted the Department of the Environment was arguing for a position as a priority creditor for monies which it was obliged to pay. I do not know whether that was done intentionally or by pure mistake. Whichever it was, the Department has certainly speedily rectified it, but it illustrates the dangers of using a private Bill, using a second party as it were, to put forward what is in fact the Government's position. It would have been better if the Government


had done it themselves and avoided what at least must have been a mistake.
My second point concerns paragraph (b) of the Motion. My colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Bagier) and I divided the Committee on this matter, and we would wish to go further. The concession made is very paltry and piffling. Security holders of the Board are being deprived of a certain portion of their capital assets without compensation and with hardly any consultation. That is the frank position of the Bill. We shall discuss the principal of that later. The Committee as a whole felt that although those people would eventually, after the moratorium period under the Bill, get part of what they are now entitled to, if the Bill were not passed, and an equity to the extent of the remainder, at least the people with small income relief should be entitled to the half that they will eventually get at an earlier stage during the moratorium period. In other words, there is no avoidance of the reduction of their capital.
We are talking of people with small incomes, not the biggest shareholder, Barclays Bank, innumerable banks, the Methodist Church, which also happens to be a shareholder, nor of any of the other bodies and corporations, and not even of the private individual as a whole. We are talking merely of the limited number of people who are entitled to small income relief for income tax purposes. The Motion will give them no change in their position. It will be no different from that of other security holders. Their capital is going irrevocably and without their consent. The only thing is that to the minimum extent they will be able to get an advance on the money which, even under the Bill, they will ultimately get. It is a very tiny concession. The only difference is the amount of interest that it represents. It is hardly a concession that costs anybody anything.
In my view, and I believe in the view of my colleagues on the Committee, those people at least should have been entitled to receive the full amount of the assets which they thought they possessed. They invested in a public trust, in a trustee security. They are precisely the people

who can least afford to have their capital taken away from them.
The Motion should have gone further than it does. It should not have taken the minimum view of the Committee, decided by two members and the casting vote of the Chairman. The Minister should have considered a little more deeply whether in the circumstances of the Bill it was desirable to go a little further towards helping these poorest people. I, and I am sure other hon. Members, have had letters from innumerable people. One of those that I have received begins:
My brother of 92 and I invested in this as a trustee security.
That is perfectly true. There are thousands of people of this character.
At this late stage it is still possible, if the Minister wishes, to go a little further still. I have no wish to oppose his Motion. As I have said, one does not look a gift horse in the mouth. But the right hon. Gentleman could go a little further still to help the poorest people affected by the Bill.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session providing for the reconstitution of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board as a Company and for the reorganisation of the capital of the Board, it is expedient to authorise—

(a) any provision of the said Act, which, so far as the said Act distinguishes between loans made to the Board before 27th, November, 1970, and loans made later, treats loans made to the Board under section 11 of the Harbours Act 1964 in pursuance of any agreement made by a Minister with the Board before 27th November, 1970 as a loan made before that date, irrespective of the date on which the loan is in fact made; and
(b) any provision of the said Act which enables a person who on 12th February, 1971 held securities of the Board which have matured before the end of a moratorium period, being a person who has held those securities at all times since that date and who is for the time being entitled to income tax relief under sections 6 or 7 of the Income and Corporation Taxes Act 1970, to obtain the redemption of one-half of his holding up to a maximum payment to each such person of £500;

and that it is expedient to authorise any loss to public funds arising from the making of any such provision.

MERSEY DOCKS AND HARBOUR BOARD BILL (By Order)

Order for consideration, as amended, read.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Bill, as amended, be now considered.

7.26 p.m.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Robert Grant-Ferris): Order. Before I call the hon. Member for City of Chester (Mr. Temple) to move his new Clause, may I say that in the debate on the consideration it will be quite in order for the hon. Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. English) to discuss the terms of his reasoned Amendment, which I have not selected.

Mr. Eric S. Heffer: On a point of order. You said, Mr. Deputy Speaker, "Before the hon. Gentleman moves the new Clause". Surely at this stage we are debating consideration?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: That is correct.

Mr. John M. Temple: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Did I understand you to say that the new Clause would be debated with the consideration or subsequently?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I am sorry that I misled the hon. Gentleman. We have not come to the new Clause yet. We are on the consideration of the Bill.

Mr. Leslie Spriggs: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. May I draw to your attention that interested Members who have constituents seriously affected by the Bill have not been able to obtain the relevant documents relating to the Committee proceedings and other documents? I wonder whether you can help us, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I believe that the hon. Gentleman is under a misapprehension. I believe that the documents are available and have been available for some little time.

Mr. Edmund Dell: Further to that point of order. It is true that the documents are now available. I understand that they have been available since last Thursday, but they were not made available following each session of the Committee in what is the ordinary

procedure on a Public Bill. As a result, hon. Members had, first, to be aware that at that late date the documents were in the Vote Office, and, second, have had to read a bulky volume of evidence over the weekend in order to be ready to debate the Bill today. Whether or not that is in order in a Private Bill, it is a totally intolerable way of conducting the business of the House.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Whether or not what the right hon. Gentleman says is true is not for me to say. But I can tell him that we are within the rules of order on a Private Bill.

Mr. Dell: I understand that on the Motion, That the Bill be now considered, it is in order to speak on the Bill as it returns to the House amended. I would like, first, to express thanks to the Select Committee, which obviously put in a great deal of work on the Bill, which presented a somewhat more intractable problem than it may have thought when it began. It considered the Bill at nine long sessions, and although I must disagree with its members on some points, I would express thanks to them for the considerable and detailed work they put in.
I would also like to thank two of the petitioners against the Bill—Mr. Washer and Mr. Collins—two private persons who petitioned against the Bill, conducted their petitions without legal advice, cross-examined witnesses produced before the Select Committee, and made statements on their own behalf, in circumstances which must have been very unusual to them. In both cases the petitioners spoke with ability, clarity and, in my view, with the rights of the case very much on their side. It may be that on some other occasion the House should consider the difficulties into which private persons are put when they petition against private Bills in these circumstances.
7.30 p.m.
The House should also consider the difficulties it is put in because of the failure to produce the Minutes of Evidence until the last minute. Hon. Members have not been able to get hold of the evidence until a few days before the Bill is considered in this House. I wrote a letter to the parliamentary agent early in the proceedings asking for copies of the evidence. I got a curt letter saying


that I could not have them. I approached the Leader of the House and, with his help and that of the officials of the House, I managed to get early copies of the evidence. But it is an intolerable situation to put hon. Members in. If a Bill of this importance is to be brought before the House under Private Bill procedure, the least the Government can do is to ensure that hon. Members have access to the Minutes of Evidence as they come forward.
The Select Committee and my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. English) say that this should have been a Public Bill, and I entirely agree. If it had been a Public Bill, the Government would have been able to whip their supporters in the usual way instead of relying on the payroll vote which, I imagine, is now lurking about the House against the possibility of a vote on this Motion or on a later Amendment. If the Government wish to force through this disasteful policy, they should do it honestly and on the basis of a Public Bill. It should have been a Public Bill, but I do not dissent from the procedure of using a Select Committee on a Public Bill in these circumstances.
Everything that has happened in the proceedings of the Select Committee, all the evidence brought forward and the decisions of the Committee itself, justify everything said about the Bill from this side of the House on Second Reading and before then. I think that only two Members of the House, given the opportunity impartially to consider the Bill in the judicial or semi-judicial capacity of a Select Committee, would have left it unaltered. They are the Minister for Transport Industries, who allowed this policy to be imposed on him, and the Prime Minister, whose policy it is. I do not think that any other hon. Member sitting on this Bill in a judicial or semi-judicial capacity could have done other than drastically alter it.
I congratulate the Select Committee on having altered the Bill, although its Amendments do not go far enough. The Bill is totally unjust. It was pointed out by Mr. Collins, when he made a statement at the invitation of the Chairman, how little had been done even to meet the points which the Chairman of the Select

Committee put to the promoters of the Bill in session 7—points which, if met, would make the Bill more tolerable. I regret that the Select Committee when it came to the point went back even on some of the points which the Chairman had said were unalterable minimum demands.
Among the points which we raised on Second Reading was that the Bill created a conflict of interests between the Port and the future interests of the security holders. That there is such a conflict of interest we shall be discussing later, but it is worth referring to it now on the basis of the evidence. At the ninth meeting of the Committee, Mr. Fay, speaking on behalf of the Board, said:
It is indeed a Board which one would expect to have primarily in mind the interests of the security holders.
That is on page 2 of the report of the ninth meeting. On page 3 he again referred to the Board as being one
… which, one would assume again, reflected the interests of the security holders.
Here we have a Board, and we are setting up a company which, according to the lawyer speaking for that Board before the Select Committee, will have primarily in mind the interests of the security holders. I have great sympathy with the position of the bond holders, which I have expressed many times, but the priority interest of this statutory company or of the Board should be the future of the port of Liverpool.
The Government, by this Bill, are setting the interests of the port of Liverpool against the interests of the security holders. There is a national interest—and this the Government have recognised by the money they are giving to the Sea-forth Docks—in maintaining and developing the port of Liverpool. That interest can in certain circumstances be inconsistent with the interests of the security holders. Owing to the manner in which the statutory company is being set up, it is apparently primarily the interests of the security holders and not the national interest—not the future of the port of Liverpool—which are being promoted. For that, we have the word of the lawyer who was speaking in Committee about the policy of the Board and the subsequent statutory company.
The second point that we made in Committee was that the Bill leaves the future of the port in grave uncertainty.


This can be illustrated also by the evidence presented to the Select Committee. One of the propositions put to the promoters by the Chairman of the Committee at its seventh meeting was that there should be a maximum possible write-down of capital written into the Bill. But no such Amendment has been written in and the Committee allowed itself to be argued out of the proposition by arguments presented to it at the following meeting by Mr. Baring.

Mr. Martin Maddan: The Select Committee was unanimously argued out of that by the arguments put forward.

Mr. Dell: I am prepared to accept that the Committee was unanimously argued out of it. I am drawing attention to the implications of the fact that the Committee did not feel able to write into the Bill a maximum write-down of 50 per cent. Let us bear in mind that in the original Bill there was a maximum write-down of 30 per cent. On considering the evidence and arguments of Mr. Baring the Committee concluded that it could not even put in a maximum of 50 per cent.

Mr. Michael English: The Bill as drafted provides for 100 per cent. of a security holder's capital to be written down as to 50 per cent. and that 50 per cent. gives the security holder an equity entitlement. He rates 50 per cent. of his former non-equity security.

Mr. Dell: I follow that argument but what I am doing now is to refer to the argument which Mr. Baring used on this point before the Select Committee as showing the uncertainty which, in my judgment, continues regarding the future of the Port of Liverpool despite the organisation of this statutory company. Mr. Baring said:
It is not possible at this point in time to forecast what the situation will be in 2, 2½ or 3 years' time, and the reasons why it is not possible have been aired at length in this committee If it turns out when we get to the definitive scheme that the situation if, shall we just say, much less good than one would have hoped, the promoters of the scheme may find that they are forced by statutory limitations of the sort I am referring to to produce a scheme which results in a second insolvency.
That is the possible future as seen by Mr. Baring. In other words this Bill

does not provide any guarantee for the future of the port. The uncertainty continues at any rate until the scheme is brought forward and accepted either by the security holders or by the courts. This uncertainty which it should have been the object of the legislation to end will continue and can only mean a slow erosion of the port's prospects. There is only one way of removing uncertainty and that is a clear statement of intention by the Government as to the future of the Port of Liverpool such as I called for in the debate on Second Reading.
During that debate I had an exchange about pensions with the Minister for Transport Industries. I had understood, apparently mistakenly, from correspondence with him that he had given an assurance about pensions to the effect that in all circumstances the Government would guarantee payment of pensions. It was noticeable that on Second Reading the Minister limited his assurance to the period before the statutory company was set up. As a result I wrote to him again and he has repeated the limitation that the Government's assurance in respect of pensions relates only to the period until the statutory company is set up. If the right hon. Gentleman wishes to intervene and correct me, I will be glad to give way.

The Minister for Transport Industries (Mr. John Peyton): I do not wish to correct the right hon. Gentleman but I am sure that he would not wish to add unnecessarily to the anxiety of a very vulnerable section of people. There is no reason whatever to believe that the Board will not, after reconstruction, be able to pay the pensions. I have, perfectly properly, limited the obligations of the Government throughout.

Mr. Dell: I note what the right hon. Gentleman says and I can assure him that when I have spoken to pensioners I have said that in my judgment their pensions were secure because I do not believe that in any real circumstances the Government would let them down. Nevertheless I hope the right hon. Gentleman appreciates the significance of the limitation which he has given explicitly in correspondence and again in the House in the light of what Mr. Baring said in Committee. To the extent that there is an assurance, I welcome it.
There is one point I would like to make about one Amendment and here I should emphasise that I speak as an ordinary Member and not officially on behalf of the Opposition. I want to express a personal view about the Amendment in the Special Report of the Select Committee Paragraph 3, No. 7 which deals with the exclusion from the Board of persons who have been directors of bodies which have failed to fulfil their financial obligations, unless the Secretary of State so consents. In Committee the Chairman made various strong statements about the behaviour of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board. During the debates on this I have not concealed my views about the behaviour of the Board. Nevertheless, I must say that no member of the Board as it was before November gave evidence on his own behalf before the Committee.
What that amounts to is that individuals have been judged, unheard, by the Select Committee. I have criticised this Bill primarily for two reasons; first because it gave no guarantee in respect of the future of the Port of Liverpool and secondly because it is totally unjust to a large number of people who have invested small sums in the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board. I believe in justice and I believe that people should not be condemned unheard. Because of that I do not think that any such provision should be written into the Bill.

Mr. English: This is an important point and it is desirable that it should be made clear, in defence of the remarks of the Chairman of the Select Committee. A Select Committee of this House considering a Private Bill, strangely enough, has no power to call witnesses. It may hear only the witnesses called by the parties. In this case the promoters initially proposed to call only the present Chairman, whom no one holds responsible for the past situation. It was only under pressure from the Committee that the promoters called additional witnesses. The fact that none of the members of the old Board was called is not something that can be laid at the door of the Committee.

7.45 p.m.

Mr. Dell: That may be. But the fact of the matter is that the Committee did not hear any member of the old Board in his own defence. Maybe the Committee

could have suggested that such persons should be called. I cannot believe that it is right to do a thing like this to people who have not been heard. It is a simple principle that before being condemned people should be heard in their own defence and it is one to which I adhere.
The Government have continued the fundamental error which they have made from the beginning in their judgment of this matter, at any rate from the time of the Cabinet meeting which, I believe, turned down the right hon. Gentleman's original proposals. That error is to believe that the national interest in the survival of the port of Liverpool should be sustained at the sacrifice of the bondholders. Unfortunately, even with that sacrifice, the future of the port is in no way guaranteed by the Bill, which, as amended, is totally unsatisfactory. It is a cause of shame that a Bill such as this is forced by this Government on to the House of Commons.

Mr. John Tilney: I do not often agree with the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Dell) or with the hon. Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. English) but I do agree, and I have said so several times, that this ought to be a Public Bill. I also feel that the Private Bill procedure needs examining. I fully agree with what the right hon. Gentleman has said that no member who did not give evidence should be judged in his absence. I accept that there are many things which past members of the Board might have done but that, automatically, those who have served on the Board whether 10 years ago, 15 years ago, or recently should be excluded seems to be quite wrong. I have received a letter from Mr. Oliphant, the past Chairman of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board, whose views as far as I know have never yet been heard. He writes as follows:
I was Chairman of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board from December. 1964 until June, 1969. In my last statement with the Annual Report and Accounts dealing with nationalisation I made the following remarks:
'Nearly all the large ports are Public Trusts already: as such the Minister of Transport has a very large measure of control over them. They cannot build major works without his consent, they cannot raise their charges without his consent, and they cannot raise money without Treasury consent. No more control is necessary or


desirable in the interests of competition, either between themselves, or with Continental ports'.
Mr. Oliphant continues:
In 1964, 1965 and 1966 the Dock Board made a net surplus of nearly £3½ million. It was only after that that things began to go wrong and those reserves dwindled again.
It was after 1966 that the Board set-up was reorganised under the Labour Government. Mr. Oliphant goes on to say:
The reasons for the present troubles stem largely from the Labour Government's actions in regard to the raising of capital and to port charges. When I became Chairman of the Dock Board its borrowings were of the order of £25 million of long-term debentures and £40 million of bonds due for repayment in five years or less. All this was invested in long-term capital works; in other words, borrowed short and lent long—the bankers' classic recipe for the road to ruin. We determined to try and change this and in 1965 we made two debenture issues, one for £5 million and one for £15 million. This reversed the position so that at least two-thirds of our borrowings did not have to be repaid for a good many years. Seaforth was building, a lot of money going out and none coming in until it was able to start earning.
Presumably, interest had to be paid on the money borrowed. Mr. Oliphant continues:
It was obvious that it would be wise to get more of our short-term borrowings covered by long-term debentures. In 1968 we wanted to go for a further £25 million of debentures. We were told that this was too much and, at the Ministry of Transport's urging, we used borrowings from the Ministry to the tune, I think, of some £13 million towards Seaforth. We therefore reduced our proposal for long-term debentures to £15 million. After months of argument we heard through Barings who were handling this for us that the Bank of England, the Treasury and the Ministry of Transport would not let us borrow long-term in the market as we have done in the past because of the existing high rates of interest and because the industry was going to be nationalised. We were, therefore, forced to go on—and this, too, had to have their sanction as usual—borrowing short-term bonds which would have to be repaid before Seaforth was earning.
All the more reason that the Government, instead of bothering with an old-age pensioner who is not paying the full rate of income tax getting repayment of up to £500, should accept the equity of up to, say, an investment of £2,000. I realise that this matter cannot be put right now, but it might be considered in another place.
Mr. Oliphant goes on to say:
Secondly—port charges. Again and again we asked for the necessary permission to raise

port charges and again and again it took months before sanction was forthcoming. In a period of constant inflation it does not take much imagination to see what the effect was on the Dock Board's revenue. I have no means of knowing what happened after I left the Board, but these factors which were totally outside our control played a large part in laying the foundations of the present position. It may be that I, and perhaps my colleagues, ought to have resigned, but looking back I did not see how this would have helped and I cannot now see how it would have helped.
I believe that past Governments, and particularly the last Administration, are very much to blame. I think that, although the Bill will have to be passed, the House will be considering another Bill in a few years. The onus should be shifted to where it belongs. The right hon. Member for Birkenhead said that uncertainty continues. It certainly does, as long as the local authorities on Mersey-side are denied the power to buy debenture bonds or even take the equity of the port on which our prosperity depends. My plea is that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment will, when we discuss local authority reform, give those of us who live on Mersey-side the power to bring back morale to our port.

Mr. English: There are certain objects of the Bill to which neither I, nor, as far as I know, anyone else, has any objection. One of them is to alter the unusual structure of the Board, which dates primarily from an Act of 1857. One reason that it is unusual is that that Act was passed five years before there was a general company law in this country.
One of the most important points on which I hope the Minister for Transport Industries will comment is that if there are any other bodies of this type, as I believe there may be, they should be looked at forthwith by the Government. One reason that the Bill should be a public Bill is that the Government must accept a measure of responsibility for bodies which are so-called public trusts whose securities are put on the market as trustee securities with, as in this case, double indemnity provisions, which have an archaic structure and which are not doing a modern job to protect anyone, whether it be workers, security holders or anybody else. I hope that this example will be taken to heart.
It is all very well saying that the Government will not look after lame ducks, but I hope that if their legs seem to be in danger of breaking so that the ducks become lame remedial measures will be taken. It is different to say that they should ignore the existence of all these bodies until they become lame ducks, and continue to ignore them afterwards.

Mr. David Steel: I agree with what the hon. Gentleman says, but does he accept that the confidence of small savers who have invested in the Board and similar bodies who are not skilled investors has been shaken because they do not draw a distinction between public boards of this kind, local authorities and Government stock?

Mr. English: I was coming to that point. The Bill affects far more than merely security holders in the Docks Board. It affects the asset values of every security holding in any public trust of this character. I hope that the Minister for Transport Industries will bear in mind that this point goes much wider than his sphere of responsibility. It is a question not simply whether there are any other dock boards or dock trusts of this character but whether any water companies or other institutions with trustee stock guaranteed by nobody are affected.
I do not think that any hon. Member disagrees that something must be done about the financial situation of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board. He would be stupid if he did. The composition of the Board is unusual. It does not represent the security holders. It primarily represents the shippers and port traders of the Port of Liverpool and, to a minority extent, the Government. Neither the present Government nor past Governments are wholly responsible for what the Board did. The Government, with a minority representation on the Board, are partially responsible.
The reorganisation mentioned by the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Mr. Tilney) merely reduced the size of the Board by about half without altering the principle that I am talking about—that the majority of members of the Board are interested parties in the sense that they specifically represent, and have been elected to represent, shippers and port traders of the port of Liverpool.
8.0 p.m.
Given that unusual composition the Board has a very unusual capital structure as well. For one thing it is not like that of a company in two respects. It borrowed its money as a fixed interest security. It had no equity at all so that whatever the trading conditions of the Port of Liverpool, whatever its profitability, it was impossible to reduce interest payments even if the port temporarily declined or if its trading situation wholly changed. That is something being put right by the Bill.
The second respect in which it differed—and this I do hold the old Board responsible for—is that although it was borrowing money as a fixed interest security and was really a perpetual borrower, whether long term or short term in the financial sense, it never repaid any part. It simply borrowed to repay the former security holders, notwithstanding that it made no adequate provision for depreciation of its assets at all. Now, not even docks last for ever. I am not suggesting that the Mersey Docks were unusual in that respect though the docks were criticised in 1962 for precisely this point. It was a point then made by a Committee which enquired into all decks. It was one of the reasons for the former structure of the board being looked at by the last Labour Government. It was not in fact operating its business in the normally accepted ways of business. It was assuming that assets never died. This is not true in the real world we live in.
A local authority is, perhaps, nearer in form to the capital structure of the old Board, and indeed local authority loans are very comparable—or they were comparable—in financial market terms to the stock of this Board. Unfortunately all the investors—and we cannot merely blame the ignorant small investors, because Barclays Bank was the biggest investor and when I say all the investors, I speak of some of the highest financial authorities in the land—but a local authority does not assume that even with great assets of long life they will never cease to exist, and when it borrows money to build, say, a school, or houses, or even a town hall, it borrows it for usually 60 or in very exceptional cases 80 or 100 years, and it amortises its capital, although it does not do it like a company, and assumes that at some time its assets will cease to exist.
Neither of these two things were being done by the old Board. Whatever anybody likes to say, that cannot be regarded as good financial practice. In fact, some modest change is now being made. There is additional provision, after depreciation on a cost basis, for obsolescence.
Nobody is suggesting that the constitution of the Board should not be changed. Nobody is suggesting that its capital would not be altered. The whole question is, who should suffer? There I would claim that there is an intimate connection between the existing constitution of the Board and the capital reduction proposed in this Bill, and the intimate connection is this, that the people responsible for the Board from 1857 until now were in the greater part shippers and port traders of the port of Liverpool. They were not security holders. Shareholders in a company can elect their Board and if it finds its way into liquidation it is not totally unjust that the equity shareholders, who elected the Board in the first place, who knew they were taking a risk, should bear some of the resultant capital loss. That is not totally wrong if their risk goes the wrong way. This is common practice under the Companies Acts. In this case it is just the opposite. They did not think they would be equity holders, although they are now to a certain extent—and the extent is one of the uncertainties—although they are now to be equity holders, and thought they were investing in a fixed interest security which was backed by somebody, and indeed it was a trustee security.
One thing I am firmly convinced of is that there simply should not be trustee securities without guarantee by somebody, ultimately the taxpayer, be it the local authority taxpayer or the national taxpayer. But these are the very people, who did not have one single representative on the Board, who are the people who are to suffer. The shippers and port traders are not going to suffer. Not at all. The Government are not going to suffer. Not at all. The people who were represented on the Board, who were responsible, are the very ones who are not going to suffer, and the people who were not represented on the Board, and who did not want to be equity holders in the first place, are

going to suffer. This is what is unjust about this Bill. Let us make it plain that it is seriously unjust.

Mr. Temple: The hon. Member says that this is what is unfair about this Bill, but this Bill is to reorganise the capital and give to those people he is speaking of power to elect the directors in future.

Mr. English: There is an Amendment which I know is not going to be called, but if the hon. Member for the City of Chester (Mr. Temple) will look at it as it is on the Paper he will see a new Clause in my name. This Bill could equally well apply to getting money by precept from the shippers and port traders, if that had been wished. An Act of Parliament, the hon. Member knows perfectly well, can do anything which Parliament chooses it to do, and money could have been got from the people responsible.
Let me make it plain that these people as well as the Government were approached for bridging finance when the financial position became clear—bridging finance from those self-same people, and they refused.

Mr. Temple: rose—

Mr. English: May I explain the current financial situation of the Board and how it got into this mess, because this follows on very logically, and it may satisfy the hon. Member?
Although I recognise that certainly in the sense of being uncreditworthy the Board is insolvent, in a certain sense of the word "insolvency" the peculiar thing is that the board is in many ways not insolvent.
To start with it was a non-profit-making organisation. It was not supposed to be making a profit in the way a company is supposed to. Until 1966, as has been indicated by the hon. Member for Wavertree, it was in fact making a profit. In every year but two since 1945 it made a profit—a modest one, but, for a non-profit-making organisation, that seems not a bad record. Then came 1967. I must beg leave to point out that there is some significance in the date 1967 and some significance in the later date of 1970: interestingly enough, they happen to be dates between one General Election and another.
In 1966 the Board started to make a loss, and the hon. Member for Wavertree


has said that, although it was making a substantial loss by 1968, the Board still borrowed money. Yet the situation in 1968 was not very different in financial terms from the situation in 1970, when the Board decided that it could not borrow money and ought not to go to the security holders without revealing the situation it was in. So if the Board felt in 1970 unjustified in going to the market to re-borrow, to redeem securities, as it always had done, it seems to me that in 1968 it should also have felt that way.
The only significant difference was the Government in power at the time. In 1968 the Board knew perfectly well that it was making a loss. In 1968, however, it thought that eventually someone would dig it out of the mess by nationalising the industry. In 1970 after the Election, the Board went to the new Minister and found out that the Government were not prepared to dig it out of the mess.
Let us consider the nature of the mess. The then Minister for Transport Industries suggested that the Board should get a set of independent accountants to assess the position, and the Board did so. A mere two weeks after those independent accountants had been in—and it is a triumph for the accountants if they totally understood the business in that time—on 10th September, 1970, the accountants were forecasting a £27 million loss over 1970 and the five following years.

Mr. Frank Marsden: My hon. Friend has said that it was a "mere fortnight", but I think he will find that it was actually eight days, from 10th to 18th September.

Mr. English: I thank my hon. Friend for strengthening my point. I was referring to 10th September as the date of the letter of the accountants to the Board, as a result of which the Board made various announcements on 18th September. After this exceedingly short time, the forecast was of a £27 million loss. By 10th February, 1971, the accountants were suggesting that there would be a surplus, not only an operating surplus, but a surplus after the payment of interest and depreciation, from 1971 to 1975, ranging between £1·6 million and £2·9 million.
Something has changed in that period. The new executive committee has replaced the old Board—and again the old Board cannot shelve all its responsibilities—and for the first time a full-time executive of the Board is allowed to sit on it, whereas the old practice was never to allow such an executive to be a full-time member of the Board. Various changes have taken place which began to produce a different financial picture from the one on which the old Board acted in September, 1970, and before. There are different bases of working this out, but one can say with fair confidence that, to put it at a reasonable figure, from 1973 onwards the Board will be making a profit. So, what is required is bridging finance, a measure of support between one situation and another, whilst the "lame duck" is convalescing. This the Government refused to give, and that is where the Government are totally open to criticism. They were not required to lose any of the taxpayers' money. After nationalisation did not take place, and after realising that it was in this financial situation, the Board panicked. It announced that it was uncreditworthy and, as a result, as everyone who has dealt on the Stock Exchange knows, it became uncreditworthy. The one person to whom one does not lend is the man who states that one should not lend to him.
The present forecast is that, after the Seaforth dock and the present investment are completed the Board should be making a profit. Not only are the Board's accountants saying this—the independent accountants the Ministry advised them to get, but there is also another independent set of accountants presumably saying it—the accountants who advise the Ministry. What was really required was finance over this interim period, and that is what both the Government refused to give—although the Government had four representatives on the Board—and what the shippers and port traders refused to give although they were represented by a majority of the Board. That is a responsibility which they could have borne, instead of asking the security holders to bear all the results of the situation that the Board was in.
8.15 p.m.
The requirements of the Port of Liverpool are that the Board needs to be


reconstituted, the Board needs bridging finance and there needs to be a measure of capital reorganisation. The Board would have been reconstituted, the Board's finance would have been provided, and there would have been a measure of capital reorganisation, had the industry been nationalised. It still seems to me that would have been the best solution, but it is hardly a solution that the present Government can adopt, so this supposedly Private Bill reconstitutes the Board, produces the capital reorganisation and, very grudgingly, the Government are providing the bridging finance. The Government are currently financing the port, making themselves a priority creditor and at the same time basically saying to the Board that they will do this only if the Board produces a Private Bill that reconstitutes the Board and—this is where it is unjust—only if the Board produces a Private Bill that affects all the individual security holders who were not responsible. This supposedly Private Bill, in which the Government have had a large share of interest, does not come before the House in the normal way of a Public Bill, where the Minister can be forced to reply—although I realise he may in fact reply—and where he can be cross-questioned in Committee.
I will answer the hon. Member for Wavertree. When I use the shorthand words "the old Board" I and, indeed, the whole Committee recognise that not every member of the Board over a long period of time is equally responsible. I was surprised that a supposedly reputable journalist in a Sunday newspaper said that that was the position the Committee had taken up. He must have got his information from an interested party and not looked at the amendment which we made. We have not said anything as stupid as that. What we have said is that no such person—not merely members of the old Board but members of any corporation that has failed to fulfil its financial obligations—should sit on this board except with the consent of the Secretary of State. We are perfectly well aware that there are different measures of responsibility.
We are equally aware that some people must have been responsible. I have no intention of naming names on the Floor of the House; it would be most unjust

to do so; but it is clear that somebody was responsible, and it is not unjust that anyone who holds a position of this character—it was regarded as a great honour in Liverpool to be a member of the Board—should realise that it is not merely an honour but that it carries with it a function that should be performed with responsibility and, if he does not, there may be possible consequences of his actions. No financial consequences will follow other than possibly the modest loss of a director's fee.
The real problem of the old Board illustrates that there must have been, at the very least, incompetence. I have mentioned the capital structure of the old Board and how it was borrowing in effect in perpetuity to invest in assets that obviously had a limited life. Its labour relations were hardly among the best. We have endeavoured as a Committee to improve the situation by having some facilities provided for a trade union member of the Board.
I turn to the question of port charges, a matter raised by the hon. Member for Wavertree. I have never suggested that the Labour Government had no responsibility in this matter. The Labour Government, as well as the present Government, have some responsibility for the situation of this Board. When I talk about "the Government" I mean the Government of the day. We cannot get away from the fact that nobody ever asked the Labour Government to raise the port charges by as much as the new management has raised them. Nobody came along to the Labour Government and suggested a 20 per cent. increase, which is what the charges were increased by on one occasion. The board can blame the Labour Government for cutting its applications, but it cannot blame anyone but itself for not making applications in the first place to make the port viable. If it thought it could be made viable, it should have put forward an application and then have left the matter to the Government of the day.

Mr. Richard Body: And warned the security holders.

Mr. English: As the hon. Member for Holland with Boston (Mr. Body), who was the Chairman of the Committee, points out, the Board should have warned


the security holders. Clearly, there are fairly recent members of the Board who cannot in any way be regarded as responsible. There are other members of the Board—and one, an ex-Chairman, is now dead—who must have borne a measure of responsibility. It is a significant fact that there were only two members of the Board—and I do not wish to quote any names—who saw fit to invest their own money. The other supposedly competent businessmen had not very great trust in the organisation they were running. Quite a number of others invested money for which they were trustees. If any did this personally, I have much more contempt for a man who invests other people's money in such an organisation than I have for the individuals who do not even invest their own money.
It is impossible to say that every single member of this Board was spotlessly white. Some of them were in my view incompetent scoundrels and to that extent I support the chairman's remarks in the Committee. I do not mean the present executive committee or the more recent members of the Board, but we want every single person on that old Board to be investigated to determine his exact share of responsibility before he goes back on the Board. Their organisations, the shipping companies and the port traders are regarded in Liverpool almost as "the establishment" of the city. These very people, as well as the Government, have refused in any way to assist this organisation for which they were at least morally responsible. The Government have taken the same attitude, but to a lesser extent.
I find it an extraordinary precedent for a Conservative Government to put forward under the cloak of a Private Bill the proposal that security holders who were not responsible in this way should have their capital assets devalued. The Labour Government would not have done that. A Labour Government which nationalised the port would have given them their money. The old Board was entirely right to believe that. Even though it had been making a loss, they would have got their money back. I would have been as pleased to see Barclays Bank get back its £2 million as I would have been to see Mr.

Collins and Mr. Washer get their money back. That is what would have happened if the election had not gone the way it did.
The Conservative Government are deliberately saying that what a Labour Government would have done would have been wrong. This is a precedent upon which Opposition Members will reflect. The next time Labour is in power and our Government propose to nationalise an industry that is making losses, we shall reflect on this principle and will say that it will be unjust to charge the taxpayer with the cost of a lame duck. This is the precedent which the Conservative Government are putting forward. It is a precedent that can be followed by hon. Members on this side of the House. It is a precedent that says that if an organisation is making losses and if we can claim that its asset value ought to be less than it is, we should allow security holders to suffer the consequences.
My main feeling about the Bill is that it is unjust to all the security holders. I believe that the people who were responsible, including the Government and private corporations, should have borne the loss. I do not believe that Barclays Bank should have borne this loss, which after all represents other people in a financial sense, and I certainly do not believe that the Collinses and the Washers of the world, the old-age pensioners, the Methodist Church, the co-operative societies and private companies, small and large, should have shouldered this burden. They were not responsible. In that respect the Bill is unjust and is put forward by a body which does not represent those people, but which represents the people whose financial faces are to be saved at others expense.

8.30 p.m.

Mr. Maddan: Like the hon. Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. English), I was a member of the Select Committee. Apart from the political passion of the hon. Gentleman's closing phrases, his account of the facts laid before the Committee and the Committee's attitude to them is one with which I do not quarrel. For that reason, I shall not say all that I had intended, since to do so would be to repeat what the hon. Gentleman said very clearly already.
It is true that the two hon. Members on the benches opposite divided the Committee on the Preamble and on one or two other points. However, in general, not much else divided the Committee. We had nine long sittings, we heard a great deal of evidence, and we gave the matter a great deal of thought. It is worth while recording that fact.
Apart from the difficulties of the Port of Liverpool, the main problem lies with those who invested in securities of the port of Liverpool assuming that their money was safe since they were investing in trustee stock. However, the Committee learned that it was trustee stock of the second class and not really a guaranteed bet at all. I did not know that there were different classes of trustee stock, but I now know that to be the case. That was the position, and it underlines the fact that all investors should be careful to read the small print and seek advice about these matters. The investors in the port of Liverpool were taking a risk, as the present position shows.
Had this Bill not been brought before Parliament, and had the Port of Liverpool gone into liquidation, the break-up value of its assets would have been derisory, and the amount that the security holders would have received would have been a drop in the bucket compared with what they will get by keeping the port running as a going concern and carrying out the financial reconstruction provided for in the Bill.
The hon. Member for Nottingham, West said that this was a terrible precedent in that it suggested that, when lame ducks were nationalised, the owners would not get what the hon. Gentleman described as "full compensation". I have a very simple remedy for that. Let us not nationalise anything ever again.

Mr. J. T. Price: The hon. Gentleman is not in a position to guarantee that.

Mr. Maddan: I can do my best to procure it. If any of my electors think of voting for the Labour Party in the next election because it might introduce a nationalisation measure, I shall warn them of the terrible events that will follow, assuming that they are sufficiently misguided to do it.

Mr. Dell: The hon. Gentleman seems to have forgotten that such a vote in a General Election will no longer be an adequate security against nationalisation. It is his Government who have nationalised Rolls-Royce.

Mr. Maddan: There will be this assurance: if a Conservative Government are forced to remedy a situation which they have inherited from their predecessors, they will at least be fair in the circumstances. Whether what the hon. Member for Nottingham, West suggests will be fair in the circumstances is another matter.

Mr. J. T. Price: The hon. Gentleman is trailing his coat a little too far. His argument depends upon the thesis that the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board, which is in this deep trouble where the investments of bona fide parties are at risk, is a nationalised concern. It is nothing of the kind. The Board has never been nationalised. It is no use the hon. Gentleman trying to make party political capital out of that kind of situation.

Mr. Maddan: It appears that the hon. Member for Westhoughton (Mr. J. T. Price) has not followed the point of his hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, West, which was simply that the board operated as a private statutory one and that this Bill provided a precedent for future nationalisation measures by the Labour Party without full compensation to the owners. However, it is not necessary to pursue the point, because it does not fit into what the hon. Member for Nottingham, West said.
The hon. Gentleman made one point with which I take issue. He said that the Government will not suffer. They will, of course. All the Government's pre-November loans, amounting to some £15 or £20 million, will suffer exactly the same capital write-down as other securities issued by the Board.

Mr. Simon Mahon: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Maddan: No. I think that I ought to continue my speech. I am certain that the hon. Gentleman will have an opportunity to make his points.
It was said that the Private Bill procedure was a difficult one for unrepresented private petitioners. However, I


am sure that the hon. Member for Nottingham, West will agree that my hon. Friend the Member for Holland with Boston (Mr. Body) leant over backwards to see that the lay petitioners knew exactly what was happening, how the proceedings were going, and that they had every opportunity to make their points to the Committee, which they did with both grace and effect.

Mr. Dell: I join the hon. Gentleman in paying tribute to the way the Chairman conducted the Committee. He clearly did exactly what the hon. Gentleman says and assisted these private petitions in every possible way. However, that is not an adequate defence of the position. It is clear that most private persons affected by the Bill had no hope of petitioning against it.

Mr. Maddan: That is not one of the matters before us.
I turn now to one of the main matters which has arisen concerning what I may term the old directors. I do not want to quarrel with the considerations put forward by the hon. Member for Nottingham, West. It is a moot point, as every politician knows, when one should resign. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Mr. Tilney) read a letter from a distinguished former director in which he said that he did not think that resigning would do any good. As Members of Parliament we perhaps have a lesson to teach directors of public boards: that sometimes one has to resign, even though it is not thought that it will do any good, because it is the only way that one can make one's point effective for the benefit of others.
During a difficult time, when the profits of the port have plunged and losses are mounting, it is a moot point whether it is right for the Board to continue in office and to continue to borrow from the public. I am prepared to give the directors the benefit of that doubt in the sense that, if the Secretary of State considers that their contribution was such that they should be made members of the Board in future, they should be eligible for appointment. That, indeed, is what the Amendment provides.
When a Bill is brought before Parliament to write down debts, or to relieve a corporation of debts which it owes, then

Parliament has to consider whether this is something which it can swallow easily, whether it is something which it can allow to be made an easy precedent, or whether it must make that road difficult to travel. One of the strong reasons for the Amendment about directors was to make clear the distaste felt by the Committee, because there was no alternative owing to the situation which had arisen, in having to deal with the Bill. But certainly the majority felt that it was a necessary Bill.
The right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Dell) said that the Committee initially made certain proposals and subsequently these were modified. In a complicated financial matter it is essential to get the best result. There was a good deal of to-ing and fro-ing of position between the Committee, the promoters, and other interested parties. The Committee did not feel that it could legislate financial plans upon the promotors. It had to make proposals and see what the reaction would be to see how far it was practical to go in certain directions. That is what happened when the detailed Clauses came to be considered. Had that not been done, I believe that the outcome would have been much worse for the security holders.
The right hon. Gentleman referred particularly to no maximum write-down being incorporated in the Bill. There was no floor to the amount of write-down. The reason is clear from the evidence. The witness to whom the right hon. Gentleman referred, Mr. Baring, made it clear that there were three factors, all of which were interdependent. There was the amount of write-down, the amount of interest payable, and the length of postponement of the redemption of the debt. It is like a bath with three plug holes. Unless all three are stopped up, one might as well not stop any one at all because in the end all the water can escape through that one.
Since it seemed unreasonable for Parliament, with a Bill of this sort, to shackle the Board in all respects, it was foolish to shackle it in any particular respects. We could not possibly foresee which were the important factors under which to put a floor—the amount of write-down, the amount of interest, or the length of postponement of redemption—for the simple


reason that it is only as the port develops over the next few years, as the financial situation of the company changes, as rates of interest in the market change, and as many other factors change, that it will be possible to see what can be done in the best interests of the security holders.
I make no apology whatsoever for not accepting the Amendments which the promoters brought to us to implement what the Committee, through the Chairman, had said, because, on hearing further evidence, it seemed that the interests of the security holders would be better preserved by other provisions, such as the shortening of the moratorium period, the way in which the classes of security holders had a chance to approve the scheme, the appointment of a court to arbitrate in the event of dispute, and so on.
I do not believe that the future of the Port of Liverpool is uncertain. From all that I have heard, under its present management, and with the opportunities that it will now take, I think that the port's future is good. I believe that trade will increase with Seaforth and other measures. I believe that the marketing of the services of the port will be improved, as will its financial management, and that it will not be long before the new Board will find it possible to go to the market and borrow again.
I reject utterly the thought that the Committee's position was founded on the future of the Port of Liverpool being uncertain. It was not. The long-term future of the port of Liverpool is rosy, and, because I believed that, it seemed right to leave the maximum latitude to the Board to secure the best interests of those who had invested in it.
Having said all that, I must say that the Committee, the House and Parliament have been confronted with a bad job, for reasons which the hon. Gentleman explained, and that we have tried to make the best of it.

Mr. Eric S. Heffer: I do not think that a Labour Government, when dealing with the nationalised Port of Liverpool, or when dealing with any other industrialised industries, would act in the way in which the Government are acting over the Bill. I do not think that they would be so

heartless. Even if they gave less compensation to some of the larger holders of stock, they would pay full compensation to the old-age pensioners and those who stopped below £2,000. This aspect of the Bill, apart from anything else, is deplorable.
The hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Mr. Tilney), as usual, put forward a vigorous defence of the Conservative Party's position, and called in aid the words of Mr. Oliphant who was at one time the Chairman of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board. The House should know that I, like the hon. Member for Wavertree, know Mr. Oliphant very well. I sat on a committee with him—not on the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board—and at every committee meeting I had a clash with him, for the simple reason that he was a dedicated supporter of the Conservative Party. It is therefore obvious that he would blame this situation on a Labour Government. He would not be putting forward his party point of view if he did anything else. So that is not necessarily the best evidence on this point.
8.45 p.m.
Mr. Oliphant is also a leading figure in the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce. It is well known that the hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley), who recently put forward a scheme for the butchering of U.C.S., also came to Liverpool during the period of the Labour Government and wrote a report on the future of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board, in which he completely rejected nationalisation and said that the answer to the problem was that the Board should be a private company. So these are not necessarily the best witnesses to call in aid.
The Report from the Committee—I am not talking of the Special Report—says:
A Report by the Minister for Transport Industries was considered by the Committee. The Report stated the Government's support for the Bill and in particular recommended that the provision relating to the conversion of capital should be accepted.
The operative words are
the Government's support for the Bill".
In this debate, as in previous debates, we are going through a pretence. We are pretending that this is a private Bill,


when everyone knows that it is basically a Government Bill, that it could not even get to this stage without the definite support and, in a sense, sponsorship of the Government.
The Bill does precisely what the hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury wanted; it transforms the Board from a public trust into a private enterprise company. Because this is basically a Government Bill, the Government must accept full responsibility for the future of the port and also for the present situation.
In Committee, Mr. Fay, Q.C., counsel for the Board, said that a number of people would be making sacrifices:
I may also and in this context mention the reduction which is proposed in the number of employees in the Board: there is to be a slimming of the Board's undertaking, particularly in the headquarters staff and engineers' department, which means that there will be a reduction of the numbers employed and to that extent those persons are being asked to face a disagreeable fact inherent in the situation in which the Board finds itself.
Redundancies, in other words, unemployment, will occur. I have said that basically this is a Government Bill and that means that the Government are responsible for the unemployment which will occur.
We already know that over a period of time the Board has allowed certain jobs to go and has not replaced certain workers, so that by natural wastage there has been a considerable reduction in the numbers employed. But here we are to have further redundancies in an area which already has 42,000 unemployed. Those workers will have little prospect of employment in an area with such a high level of unemployment. This is particularly true of those who are 45 or over. I have workers of that age coming to my surgery, as my hon. Friends do, and some have been unemployed for six months and some even longer, and some have considerable skills.
The Bill is before Parliament because the Government refused a bridging loan. This was brought out in the evidence of Mr. Cuckney, the present chairman of the Board, and others in the Committee stage. It was also shown that by the middle of 1972 one-third of the Liverpool docks could be closed. That is the proposal now before us—that the

whole of the South End docks of Liverpool could be closed by August, 1972.

Mr. Maddan: Would the hon. Gentleman add that Seaforth is being built?

Mr. Heffer: The hon. Gentleman does not come from Liverpool and does not know that my friends and I have been arguing for the extension and development of Seaforth for the last 20 years, that we pioneered the whole of this docks system. If the hon. Gentleman will contain himself, I am coming to the Seaforth aspect.
The Director-General, Mr. Edwards, in the course of evidence said:
We were proposing to close the south docks gradually over a period of years and we have now set a target date for August, 1972 for the closure of the south docks.
All of us from Merseyside knew that the South End Docks were to be closed over a period of years, but it is now proposed that one-third of the Liverpool dock system should be closed by the middle of 1972. This is the point which I wished to bring home to the hon. Member for Hove (Mr. Maddan). We also understood that the South End Docks would not be closed entirely until Seaforth was a going concern, that one thing would be dependent upon the other. That will not be the position now. I again quote Mr. Edwards:
We had hoped that we should phase them out gradually after the opening of Seaforth. We shall now have to accelerate it in order to save primarily on the maintenance which is extremely high.
I digress here for a moment on the question of maintenance. I worked for the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board for many years. Before somebody says, "Perhaps that is why it got into difficulty", I would mention that I worked for the Board when it was making a handsome profit. It could have made an even higher profit because there was a time when I, as a senior shop steward, suggested to the then management that we should introduce a maintenance system which would be much more mobile and effective than the one we had then. I did not get very far. I was told that the men would not wear it. I said, "You leave that to me. Let us talk about the system, and then we can talk about getting the men to wear it. It will also mean that the men will be


able to earn higher wages but you will get higher productivity." This was not accepted. I merely give that as an example of the fact that there could have been better and more efficient management in the past.

Mr. Marsden: Before we move away from the South End Liverpool Docks, is my hon. Friend aware that the figure for redundancies has been quoted as 1,195?

Mr. Heffer: Yes. My hon. Friend has given the figure which I was about to give and I am grateful to him.
Under one-third of the income from the Liverpool Docks now comes from the South End Docks, but certainly a few years ago one-third came from South End. The closure of those docks will cause enormous problems. At present it is estimated that 1¼ million tons of cargo goes through the South End Docks. This was brought out in the evidence before the Committee. When those docks are closed that cargo will have to go elsewhere. But if it cannot go elsewhere in Liverpool, where will it go? That is a point we have to consider seriously, because the flooding of the Seaforth docks will begin in July of this year but the first berth will not be open until January or February, 1972. The entire complex of the Seaforth docks will not be available, and that means that we shall be faced with the problem of where to put 1¼ million tons of cargo, and how it is to go through the port of Liverpool.
Yet everybody knows that today Liverpool is primarily a cargo port. We have lost most of the passenger trade, through circumstances beyond our control; in any case, it was almost inevitable that we would lose it. One-third of the docks, catering for 1¼ million tons of cargo, will be lost because we shall not have the replacement by next year. There is an old but true saying that if the port of Liverpool is prosperous the whole of Merseyside is prosperous, but if it is not prosperous and is in a difficult position the whole of Merseyside is affected.
9.0 p.m.
I put it to all hon. Members who are interested, and particularly to the Minister: what will happen during that interim period? I do not think that anyone knows. It could mean a permanent loss

of trade to the Port of Liverpool unless the problem is overcome.
I agree that Seaforth offers immense opportunities for development and for the future of the Port of Liverpool. As I said, over the years, many of us have pressed for that development to take place. But what I fear is that the very fact that we have a receiver of rates in the Port of Liverpool has done untold harm both to the present situation and to the future prospects for Liverpool. Traders who would have come to Liverpool are now not so certain that they will come. Again, I quote from Mr. Cuckney's evidence—page 30, Day 1—
Since September it has been publicly known at home and abroad that the port faces a financial crisis. This is a great discouragement to foreign exporters or shippers to use the port. In order to make the best use of Seaforth we need to turn a number of expressions and letters of intent into firm contracts, firm commitments, to invest in the port and to build facilities there.
That statement by Mr. Cuckney is absolutely right. I blame the Government primarily for the state of affairs which has existed in the port over the past nine or ten months.
I am not against the Board being reorganised. In my view, the old Board, in some respects, left much to be desired. On the other hand, people should not be attacked unless they have an opportunity to defend themselves. I take the point which has been made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Dell) and by others. I know many members of the old Board, some in my party and some not, whom I regard as reliable, good people who have done a first-class job, as they have seen it, in the port of Liverpool over the years. I think it regrettable that that statement was made by the Committee in its Special Report.
I am in favour of better management. Past management was too heavily weighted in favour of the ship owners and the traders. But the Government could have laid down that the bridging loan was conditional upon the reorganisation of the Board and the replacement of some parts, if not the whole, of the management by a more efficient management system. That is what the right hon. Gentleman could have done, and it is what I think a Labour Government, if we were not to nationalise the port, would have done. If they had


not done it, I should certainly have run into criticism myself.
Because my hon. Friends and I do not want the uncertainty to continue, we shall not oppose the Bill. We believe, however, that the workpeople are getting a raw deal. We are not in favour of the redundancies which are being proposed. Equally, we consider that smaller investors, in particular, are getting a raw deal under the Bill. It was a public trust and not a private enterprise company. Those people who loaned their money to it believed, like anyone lending to a local authority, that it was pretty well copper-bottomed. Then they found out that it was not. They must have had a somewhat traumatic experience, particularly the small investors.

Mr. J. T. Price: Would my hon. Friend also care to mentioned some of the institutional investors who were trustees of pension funds on which the future welfare of thousands of pensioners depend, funds which relied on the security of that trust?

Mr. Heifer: That is absolutely true. The co-op has been mentioned, and some unions have money invested as well. The Transport and General Workers' Union has a certain amount invested, as has the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers.
What did the Board want? It wanted a bridging loan of about £6½ million. Then it wanted a further £20 million over a period of four or five years. An hon. Member opposite has said that the Government will lose, as a result of the Bill, about £40 million to £50 million. It is common sense that if one is to write off £40 million to £50 million, one might as well lend the £27 million over the six years. There was evidence that both in 1971 and 1972 there would be a deficit, but that from then onwards there would be a definite surplus. There have been defiicits in the Board before, and they have been got over. In my view they could have been got over again.
There was the famous letter from Slaughter and May—an appropriate name in this context—dated 18th September, 1970. I cannot quote the whole letter, but the Board had come up with certain proposals for reorganisation, modernisation and more efficient management. The letter said:

We further understand that although on these calculations it is expected that a substantial deficit will be incurred in 1972–73 the Board can foresee an operating surplus in subsequent years.
I should like to quote again what Mr. Edwards said in his evidence to the Committee:
What we put to the Ministry was that either they should stand surety for our renewal, back it although not necessarily lend us the money, but that they should stand as guarantors, or else they should provide us with a substantial bridging loan to enable us to refine the action that we had already initiated to raise charges, and to streamline our organisation so that we did not, in fact, have to ruin the creditworthiness of the Board's bonds.
I put the blame squarely on the Government. They could have helped the Board and they refused to do so. To that extent they are responsible for the situation which the Board is in, and for the fact that we have this Bill before the House. They are responsible for the fact that there will be redundancies in the port of Liverpool, redundancies which in my view are premature. Those redundancies could have been dealt with by wastage over the period. We are not saying that there should not have been a smaller labour force in the Board. It could have been dealt with in the way the Board was proposing. The Government are responsible for this increase in redundancies in a high unemployment area. They are also responsible for the fact that the bondholders are to lose their money.
Since 1857, there has been a statutory obligation to operate the port. As far as I read the Bill, that obligation disappears. Clause 8 says:
It shall be the duty of the Company—
(a) to take such action as it considers necessary or desirable for or incidental to the maintenance, operation and improvement…
The operative words are "necessary or desirable". If the company decides that the operation of the Port of Liverpool is neither necessary nor desirable, then the operation of the Port of Liverpool will not go on. I ask the Minister why he is backing a Bill that does not make it a statutory obligation on the Board to ensure that the operation of the port of Liverpool continues. We would like to strengthen the Bill and will certainly support an Amendment later in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. English). I hope


we do not have to vote on it; I hope that the Minister will give us a clear assurance on this point.
The answer to the problem of the port of Liverpool is not this ramshackle Bill. It is the same answer that applies to the whole of the ports industry. We need a nationally planned ports industry. We need an efficient and modern ports industry. The way to get that is not by a ramshackle Bill like this but by public ownership at the earliest possible moment. I can give this pledge to the House, if nothing else—that once the Labour Government are returned, we shall bring the ports under public ownership. We shall nationalise them and we shall certainly pay proper compensation and not do the dirty on the bond-holders in the way the Government are doing by this Bill.

9.15 p.m.

Mr. Peyton: It might be to the advantage and help of the House if I intervene at this stage. The right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Dell) was of the opinion that the Government should pay. The question is, "Should the Government pay?" In other words, should the other taxpayers be responsible for the Board's capital debt? The answer preferred by the Opposition is "Yes, they should". The Government's reply is to the contrary.
I make it clear that neither the Government as a whole nor I as an individual are in any way unconscious of the serious—sometimes worse—results for people who have put moderate volumes of savings into a security which they regarded as virtually gilt-edged. The fact that there was no justification for that opinion does not diminish the hardship upon them and I take this opportunity, as I have taken others, of saying that I am not unaware of the consequences for them.
The basic point here is that as the Government have refused to find the money because they thought it right, and the Board is unable to find funds from any other source, this Bill is clearly essential to the Board's future and the operations of the port. That fact does not make it a Public Bill. The Board faces a situation when it must restore its own finances. It must ensure the future operation and development of the port. It has, incidentally, to do all that it can

to safeguard the interests of the security holders. No greater disservice could be done, either to the port as a whole or to security holders, than by continuing with the present uncertainty.
Above all, it is essential that the Chairman and the Board should be able as soon as possible to know the size of the problem facing them and free to apply their considerable abilities to the management problems of the port. The right hon. Member for Birkenhead said that there was a national interest here, and I agree that there is. He claimed that the mere fact that the Government were supporting the Seaforth dock was an acknowledgement by the Government of this national interest. This is true, but the interest is limited as it must be in all other port undertakings supported by the Government. Because the Government contribute powerful aid to the Seaforth Dock it does not mean that they are necessarily giving a blanket guarantee to the whole operation of this or any other port in similar circumstances.

Mr. Heffer: Would the right hon. Gentleman not agree that the national interest here lies in the fact that a quarter of our exports and imports go through the Port of Liverpool?

Mr. Peyton: That is a point I have made in this House and elsewhere. I must remind those who have the interests of the Port of Liverpool at heart that it is surely a national interest that the port should survive but that the Government are only one of the parties involved in that national interest. There are many others. The hon. Gentleman knows this and implied a good deal of that in his thoughtful speech. There are others who must help to sustain the national interest in the port.
There is one point about the bond holders which I should like to make and it refers to one sentence from Mr. Cuckney's report when he says:
It would be totally irresponsible if my colleagues and I had not the plight of the security holders constantly in mind, which indeed we have. The best way they can be helped is by the port returning as quickly as possible to profitability and in the same way the prospects of those employed in the undertaking will be improved. All involved have a common interest.
I should like to say how much I appreciate the fact that in such a debate as this, when opinions are divided, Mr. Cuckney


has not been brought into a party battle. I take this opportunity of saying how grateful I am to him and those who have worked with him for what they have tried to do to restore the situation. I think that I take the House with me when I say that the problems of the Port of Liverpool have not been easy. It took a very courageous man to come in from outside and take them up. He has done wonderfully well in securing local support and good will to an extent that had not been previously available from all concerned with the port. I take this opportunity of saying how much what he has done is appreciated and how much we on this side of the House, and I believe hon. Members opposite, wish him well in his efforts to put the past behind him and to put the future of the Port of Liverpool on a sounder foundation than has been possible for many years.

Mr. Gordon A. T. Bagier: I think that the whole Committee was impressed by Mr. Cuckney and his attitude and the manner in which he gave evidence. I am sure that the docks have as good a chance under his control as they would have under anybody else's. I agree with the Minister that Mr. Cuckney's good intentions for the bondholders are manifest. Would not the right hon. Gentleman agree, however, that because of the age of some of the bondholders, who will not get their money for several years, it would have been a much better plan if the Government had agreed a bridging loan or made it possible under the Money Resolution for the Committee to provide for such people?

Mr. Peyton: It would be better if I dealt with that point later. I have been charged throughout with having obstinately refused the bridging loan which was asked for.
My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Mr. Tilney), in a short but extremely effective speech, called attention to the reactions of former members of the Board to some of the blanket charges, expressed in very strong terms, against them. I should like, without adding heat to the debate, to express agreement with my hon. Friend. There is something very unfair about people who do not deserve it being condemned and not having any opportunity of answering the condemnation when it is

gratuitously bestowed upon them. [Interruption.] I am obliged. The right hon. Member for Birkenhead said something of that kind. I am concerned to say from the Government side how serious the matter is and how important it is that we should refrain from spreading blame over a class of people without even naming a person as being accused and causing them considerable injury. This also gives rise to a considerable reluctance among people ever again to take part in such undertakings.

Mr. English: Will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind that, in my view, it is unlikely that had any of them wished to be called as witnesses by the counsel to the Board promoting the Bill that wish would have been refused? Had the promoters refused to call a member of the Board who wished to be called, and had that fact been drawn to the Committee's attention, I should have thought that the Committee would have been only too willing to get the House, which, unlike the Committee, has the necessary power, to call him directly.

Mr. Peyton: I do not think that I had better follow that point. The answer to the hon. Gentleman's question must be given by the people principally concerned. People who are not politicians, faced with some of the words used about them, might be excused for feeling reluctant to exposing themselves to more of that sort of treatment. That would not be an unreasonable view to take.
The hon. Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. English) made the point that the status of trustee securities should be changed. That is a perfectly fair point for him to make, but the point which is equally true and which must be accepted is that trustee securities at the moment are not guaranteed in any way by the Government. The fact that a security enjoys that status does not put any obligation upon the Government whatsoever. Of course, this in no way takes away from the hon. Gentleman's right to put the argument that the status of these securities should be in some way enhanced by a Government guarantee. It would be very difficult to draw the line or to say exactly how it could be done, but that is not a point for me, nor one I should pursue now, but I am entitled to make the point, and I should do so, that trustee securities such as the Docks


Board bonds were in no way guaranteed by the Government, whatever people may have assumed.
So the real question, as the hon. Gentleman said, is, who should suffer? Every now and again there crops up this question, who should suffer? There is a plain expression of desire that the Government should suffer. I have sat on those benches opposite long enough to understand what is meant by that and to know just how trenchantly it is possible to express the desire that the Government should suffer, that they should every now and again suffer some inconvenience for their actions, but what we are talking about here is not the Government suffering some peculiar agony or torture for what they do; we are talking about the ordinary mass of taxpayers, who have no choice in this matter if the Government decide to come to the rescue—of the bondholders in this case—when, indeed, it would be the general taxpayers who would suffer.
The Government have come to the conclusion, I believe rightly, that the general body of taxpayers in this country has been called upon to carry out too many rescue operations. The fact that the present Administration every now and again have to do just this does not weaken the argument in any way that it is undesirable, and wrong, in my view, that every time an operation is seen to fail the Government should, as I have said before, reach for the anaesthetic bottle and cure the pain at the expense of the taxpayers. I think I am entitled to make this point in passing—it was put in the hon. Gentleman's own speech—that 1966 achieved some significance. I leave the point at that.
He referred at some length to the possibilities of a future surplus, in 1973, as was referred to and indicated in the accountants' report; it was stated that the Board will be making a profit by 1973. Well, in my view, we have been given the possibilities for a very long time. What I should like to make quite clear is that if the Board is to make substantial profits in 1973 then this Bill will have done no great harm to the position of the bondholders. The bondholders will be in a better position to take advantage of the profit-making operation than they would be without the Bill.
The point made by the hon. Gentleman was that someone was responsible for what happened. Undoubtedly someone was. I believe myself that it is very difficult and very invidious to attempt to single out Board members and say, "You were responsible", but one can fairly criticise the framework. For many years management consisted entirely of part-time members. To them the fact that they represented outside interests was in no way wicked; they were put there by those outside interests. This old nineteenth century framework of management was archaic and anachronistic, but that is not to say that those who took part in the management were entirely to blame for the consequences. Perhaps others could be brought in here. The hon. Gentleman said that labour relations in the port left something to be desired, and I believe that is very much so—

9.30 p.m.

Mr. Heffer: I should like to correct a myth about labour relations and the Board. The Board's labour relations may not have been the best in the world but were by no means the worst. If I remember rightly, there have been two strikes by Board employees since the end of the Second World War. Labour relations in the port with the dock workers' employers were very bad. Only in the last 18 months has the Board itself employed any dockers—and only about 1,300.

Mr. Peyton: I do not dissent from what the hon. Gentleman says. All I have said is that the Board's labour relations left something to be desired, and the labour relations in the Port of Liverpool as a whole left a very great deal to be desired.
The hon. Member for Nottingham, West referred to incompetent scoundrels. I should like to think that those words were not carefully prepared but came out rather more strongly than he intended. The use of such phrases can do nothing but harm, and will be felt as a great injustice by anyone who has taken part in the difficult problems of managing the port. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman might take the opportunity to modify those expressions at a later stage.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Mr. Maddan) made two points with which I express warm agreement. He said that the break-up value of the assets


of the port would have been derisory. He also said that the Government will suffer under the Bill. Of course they will. As a result of writing down the capital value of the debt, the Government's share in that debt will suffer equally with that of others. My hon. Friend said that the resignation of members of committees or boards should from time to time be urged upon them by Members of Parliament. I leave the point with the observation that I wonder whether members or boards or committees outside this place would always be prepared to accept Members of Parliament as being the proper arbiters in such matters.
The hon. Member for Nottingham, West concluded his speech by expressing the confident opinion that the future of the port was rosy. I hope he is right, but we have a long way to go, and we in this country have been living for too long with possibilities and hopes and giving insufficient attention to the hard facts. If the hon. Gentleman were to consult the Chairman or the Board—and I do not speak for either—I think he would find them to be of the opinion that the problems they still face are fairly stiff and that at the moment there is no room for any too-easy optimism about the prospects.
Turning to the speech made by the hon. Membr for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) I sympathise with him in his difficulties in reading his handwriting, because I feel sure that he deprived the House of an opportunity of receiving from him an unusual gem. He charged the Government with having refused a bridging loan. Mr. Cuckney has stated on other occasions that bridging finance would constitute, in the context of the affairs of the Port of Liverpool, a bridge to nowhere, and that is a view I hold, too. If the Government had made an immediate loan available, one wonders what would have been the consequences and where it would have led. What we must all be concerned to produce is a port that does not just look for loans, but a port that is able to pay its way in the difficult and highly competitive condition of the modern world.
The hon. Gentleman said he considered the receiver's presence to have been a disadvantage in the business of securing

trade for the future. I do not believe there is any evidence of that. I believe that the receiver's presence there to receive the rates has been a marked contribution to the orderly affairs of the port during a difficult stage. I believe the hon. Member was wrong to suggest that the receiver's presence has been in any way a disadvantage.

Mr. English: rose—

Mr. Peyton: The hon. Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. English) must forgive me for not giving way. I have given way a good deal.

Mr. English: I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will forgive me for persisting, but this is an important point. The charge that the Government refused a bridging loan was not made by us, but by the accountants whom the board secured on the Minister's advice. That report was not originally put in evidence but, after some pressure from the Committee, it was put in evidence. Paragraph 1 of that report of 22nd December said:
… although these forecasts "—
those were the forecasts of the budget for 1971 and the estimated revenue accounts for 1972–75—
were subject to a high degree of uncertainty and although the surpluses were little more than marginal, they did not indicate the need for a reduction of the Board's capital debt, provided that adequate bridging finance could be obtained to supply the cash requirements over the three years to the end of 1973.
They then said:
In these circumstances we recommended that an application for bridging finance should be made to the Minister for Transport Industries…
which was refused—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir R. Grant-Ferris): Order. The hon. Gentleman ought not to read long quotations by way of intervention. Mr. Peyton.

Mr. Peyton: I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman has only convinced me of how right I was in my initial unwillingness to give way, and how wrong I was to change my mind. The simple point is that the Government refused a bridging loan, there is no doubt about that. Nobody wishes to avoid the point.

Mr. Spriggs: Then why raise the point?

Mr. Peyton: The hon. Gentleman made that charge and I refute it. I do not believe that if we had made this loan it would have been of material assistance to the Board. I think that it would have just anaethetised or put to sleep the problem for a short time and I believe Mr. Cuckney agreed with that view.
The hon. Gentleman referred to the position of a public trust port. I think that I have made it clear that one of the tasks to which I hope that the new National Ports Council will address itself is the amendment of the constitutions of public trust ports. These are rather quaint, old-fashioned pieces of machinery which emanated from the last century. It is true that some of their members are elected and that others are nominated by the Minister, but they are in no way answerable to those who elected or appointed them, and they are under no defined financial duty. They seem to be strange creatures suspended in a trading vacuum. I hope very much that the National Ports Council will address itself to them.
A point has been raised about the statutory duty laid on the port authority. This is a matter which is raised in a later Amendment. But, as it was touched upon during this broad debate, I hope that I shall not be considered out of order if I reply to it shortly now.
I understand from the later Amendment that the Opposition are worried about the fact that there is not sufficient statutory duty laid upon the new Board to run the port. My belief is that the Amendment would put upon the authority a duty which the Opposition would not wish to impose, namely, to sustain the whole port operation as it is now.

Clause 8 of the Bill says:
(1) It shall be the duty of the Company—

(a) to take such action as it considers necessary or desirable for or incidental to the maintenance, operation and improvement of—

(i) the docks; and
(ii) the conservancy of the Port of Liverpool…

(b) to administer the pilotage services of the Liverpool pilotage district…


(2) Particular powers conferred or particular duties laid upon the Company by the existing Acts shall not be construed as derogating from each other or from the generality of subsection (1) of this section.

Certainly this is not the last word that I wish to say on the matter but, in the Government's view, the duty in that Clause goes a very long way. If the Opposition consider that it does not go far enough, I shall be glad to look further at the point. However, I do not feel able to accept the precise wording of the Opposition Amendment. I hope that I shall be forgiven for raising the point now. It was raised very properly in the debate, and I thought that it might assist the House if I made the general point now.

Sir Arthur Irvine: Before the right hon. Gentleman resumes his seat, perhaps I might raise one point which it may be helpful to adumbrate before we come to the later Amendment. Is the right hon. Gentleman of the view that the duty imposed upon the company in Clause 8 is less than the duty formerly set upon the Board? It seems to me that there is a reduction of the duty in Clause 8 to one which is less than that formerly placed upon the Board.

Mr. Peyton: I speak with some reservations. The right hon. and learned Gentleman has the advantage over me with his knowledge of the law, so I shall be fairly careful before offering a detailed opinion on the construction of these words. However, I believe that there is no substantial lessening of the duty upon the company from that which existed before. Certainly I do not believe that that was the intention. While I would not and could not accept the words proposed in the later Amendment, I should be ready to have a further look at the matter to see whether the point ought to be cleared and a heavier duty put upon the Board to ensure the future management of the port. I take the right hon. and learned Gentleman's point and shall be glad to look at it before the Bill goes to another place.

9.45 p.m.

Mr. Richard Crawshaw: I should not like this occasion to pass without making some contribution to this important debate, if only to pay tribute to the Committee and the hard work that it has done.
I has been said that one cannot make a silken purse out of a sow's ear. I do not think that the Committee, with the best will in the world, could make a just Bill


out of something which was inherently unjust from the beginning.
From various remarks which have been made this evening, it is apparent that right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite have a completely different concept of what is just and unjust from that of right hon. and hon. Members on this side of the House. It is clear that things will be helped under certain circumstances. The Minister says that the Government's lame duck policy means that they do not bail out people, but in fact it is a matter of degree. They have the same policy, but it is a matter of degree which people they will bail out.
It has been said that the Labour Government—I might even subscribe to this view—have been most stupid when they have nationalised undertakings. They have given full value to the shareholders in those undertakings even when it has been known that they would have gone bankrupt had they not been taken over. They might have been stupid, but I doubt whether any right hon. or hon. Gentleman opposite could say that they have ever been unjust. The Government are allowing a Bill to go through which is not only unjust but stupid.
It is not for me to try to teach finance to right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite, but they know the repercussions which the Bill is having and will have on the financial structure of this country. Bills are already being put through by undertakings asking for permission for loans to be raised abroad. When asked why, they say, "Look at what has happened to the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board. We do not think that we shall be able to raise the money here."
It is a pious hope on the part of the Committee that circumstances here are so exceptional that this must not be taken as a precedent. It is being taken as a precedent that an undertaking which has always been viewed as as good as gilt stock is being discredited. This is why the Government are not only being unjust but stupid.
I wish to raise only one other point concerning the apparent wish of so many people to whitewash those involved. I do not subscribe to this view. I am not one who would seek to bring down another person without giving him every

opportunity of stating his case. Mud is being slung, and innocent people are getting some of it. Each time that I have spoken on this subject in the House I have asked the Minister to hold an inquiry into who was responsible for this state of affairs. Even the people who are seeking to indulge in white washing say that somebody was responsible, and in my view it is not justice for the right hon. Gentleman to say that we must not be critical of those involved. Of course many of them were hard-working members of the Board who did not understand the full complexities of the situation, but there were on that Board people who understood fully the complexities of what was involved, and the financial difficulties of the Board, not only last year, but the year before, and the year before that.
I do not think that it does any good for us in this House to say that because some people might have mud stuck on them we should not have an investigation. An investigation would clear the innocent. The Minister knows that on several occasions I have asked for an inquiry so that the people who are not involved can be shown to be innocent. I know the hon. Member for Holland with Boston (Mr. Body) personally. I do not believe that he is the sort of person who, without giving due thought to it, would make the remark that he made about the borderline between incompetence and criminality.
I receive many letters from people who have invested small amounts of money in the Board. Last week I received a letter from someone who was due to receive back £500 that he had invested. He told me that he had received a letter urging him to reinvest his money with the Board, and then, a month later, it was dishonoured. I do not believe that we should be too squeamish about holding an investigation into circumstances such as that, because I am convinced that if the Board were not borrowing money on the market last year without breaking the criminal law, they were doing so the year before. What about the people who, for one, two or three years, have invested their hard-earned money in an undertaking but who, if the true facts had come out, would never have made that investment?
I should like an inquiry into the matter because, whether the Minister says that


the Government will bail out this undertaking or not—and I do not believe that they will—it will show that over a period of time people have been urged to invest their money in an undertaking when one, two or three people must have known that they were being asked to put their money into an unsafe organisation. If that could be shown, not only would it absolve those who could not be expected to understand a balance sheet involving millions of pounds but it would put a further obligation on the Government to reimburse fully anybody who, during the time when the Board should not have been borrowing money, invested money in the undertaking.
There are hundreds of people in that category, and I again ask the Minister to institute an inquiry into this undertaking. It is only right that those who are not involved should be seen to be cleared. I am satisfied that if there were an investigation the Minister would find that not only last year were the Board not entitled to go to the market because of its financial position, but in previous years, too. Despite his refusal to do so, I again appeal to the Minister to investigate the situation.

Mr. Heffer: Before my hon. Friend sits down, would he take it from me that his point of view is perfectly acceptable to most of us on this side and that we think that a full investigation should take place? I should like the Minister to reply to his point. But as long as he has made it clear that it is not accepted that every member of the Board is not necessarily a criminal—there has been some suggestion along these lines—an inquiry is necessary to clear up the whole situation.

Mr. Peyton: I am delighted to answer the point. It would not be my intention to recommend to the House that an inquiry should be conducted. Such inquiries, to start with, are very loose affairs. No one is under any particular charge and everybody is under a very general one. The affairs of the Board have been fairly widely and deeply inquired into over the last few weeks by the Select Committee—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Robert Grant-Ferris): Order. I am sorry to interrupt the right hon. Gentleman, but I think

that we would be out of order in pursuing this question of an inquiry, since there is nothing about it in the Bill.

Mr. Richard Body: I thank the hon. Member for Liverpool, Toxteth (Mr. Crawshaw) for what he said. It would be even more appropriate if I were to thank my colleagues on the Select Committee for all they did in making my task much easier than it might have been. Moreover, both they and our clerk, who was good enough to help us considerably, were willing to work many hours beyond the Committee sittings. Because of the consideration which they gave to the work, we made much quicker progress.
We were unanimous on almost everything, barring one paragraph—albeit a very important one—of the Preamble. That considerable unanimity is of some significance. Our Special Report was completely unanimous. I realise that one paragraph of that Special Report has been criticised—namely, our desire to amend the Bill to prevent persons coming on to the Board in future who have in the past failed in their financial obligations. However, we have made it plain from the outset that, if that were to be inserted, we would wish exceptions to be made. We thought that the fairest course would be to accept anyone who met the approval of the Secretary of State.
It is wrong for anyone to say that individuals were condemned without being heard. No individual was condemned in any way. If any individual felt that he was being condemned, he had access to that Committee. It is worth emphasising that, at one stage, it was the intention of the Board to call only one witness, but that, because of some of our probings about the past, we heard further evidence about the past conduct of the Board—some of which mitigated our opinion and some of which aggravated it.
Of course, it is an elementary rule of justice that no one should be condemned in his absence, but we were concerned with a Board of people, and a Board has to make collective judgments and decisions. I accept what my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Mr. Tilney) said when he quoted a director of the Board who attributed much of the Board's downfall to the refusal of a past Government to allow the Board to


raise its charges or to borrow money in the long term. If that is the explanation, it is an explanation, but what did the Board do about it having had that refusal not once, but over and over again, year after year, to use the words of that director?
10.0 p.m.
Surely the Board as a whole should have met and considered its future. It should have asked itself, "Can we go on running the docks and all the obligations that go with that if we are not allowed by the Government to increase our charges or borrow on the long term?". Did the Board make that decision? If it came to the conclusion that the Government's refusal would put it into serious difficulties, or might take it to insolvency, what did it do about it—and on all the evidence that should have been the Board's view? So far as we know, the Board as a whole did not express extra strong or demanding complaints to the then Government. It did not ventilate its grievances and, above all, it did not warn the security holders.
Some of those may have been institutions, and we have heard about Barclays Bank being in for £2 million. But we who sat on the Committee also heard from people like Mr. Collins and Mr. Washer, people who were not sophisticated investors, people who took it on trust, who regarded them as gilt-edged securities. My right hon. Friend spoke about a blanket charge, but surely it was a blanket decision by the Board not to do more about it.
If any individual director felt that the decision of the then Government would drive the Board towards insolvency, or let down the bondholders, or those who worked in the docks, he should have resigned and made it plain that he could not go on exercising his obligations as a member of the Board. The Board as a whole should have taken that course and it is not an excuse, albeit it is an explanation, for members of the Board to say, "We will carry on; we will not make public our fears; we will carry on being a perpetual borrower", as they were.
The point not understood by those who have criticised the Select Committee is that this was a Board which had no equity capital of its own. It was a Board

which borrowed and borrowed and had to go on borrowing whenever it had to repay. True, it was borrowing from certain large institutions, but it was also borrowing in the main from thousands of unsophisticated investors who were accepting a bond—not just a gilt-edged security, but something more than that, a body with a 100 per cent. penalty inserted, and anyone looking at this bond—and the Select Committee had an opportunity to look at a specimen—would have been driven to the view that here was something which was absolutely cast-iron.
None the less, the Board went on churning out these bonds to borrowers, to people like Mr. Collins and Mr. Washer, people in their seventies, some in ill health, some dependent on fixed incomes, people who were not looking for capital growth, who were not willing to undertake a risk with their savings. As we understood it, many of the bond holders were of that type, and that must have been known to the Board. Therefore, the Board owed them a particular duty to exercise care. If one chooses to borrow money knowing that one may not be able to repay it, one may not be a criminal—no one has said that—but one is getting very near to it. If the Board did that year by year, despite constant applications which it made to the Government at the time, it is an explanation as to what happened but no excuse.

Mr. Dell: The speech which the hon. Gentleman is making on behalf of the bondholders is one which many of us on this side of the House have made many times in our appeals to the Government not to do what they are doing. The question that I put to the hon. Gentleman is different. If what he says is true, if these responsibilities lie at the door of the Board collectively, rather than that individuals should be condemned unheard surely there should be an examination of the situation, such as my hon. Friend suggested, which the Government are refusing. That is the correct way—to hear what people have to say in their defence before they are condemned.

Mr. Body: No, I do not altogether accept that. The Board as a whole is responsible because it was making a


collective decision. If one chooses to be elected to the Board, to receive the salary and, in this case, have the standing in the port of Liverpool that those elected to the Board were given—the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) made this point—and a certain standing in the City of Liverpool, certain duties flow. If one chooses to be a member of a board, one must be bound by its decision because one is part of the decision made.
That suggestion is not particularly helpful. What is far more to the point is the future. I will not use the word "rosy" but I am optimistic about the future of the Board. The Committee was unanimous in its judgment of the new Chairman, Mr. Cuckney. We were all most impressed by what he said and how it came over to us. The Bill had a much easier passage through the Select Committee because of his evidence and attitude, and the faith that we were able to place in him for the future.

Mr. Crawshaw: Dealing with the point raised about the inquiry, would the hon. Gentleman agree, with his experience, that on all boards there are people whose advice on financial matters is taken by the board? If that is so, is it not unfair to spread this responsibility to people who have to rely on the word of these experts on the Board? Is not the hon. Gentleman being unfair to these others? Surely on this Board there are individuals who were advising the Board on its financial responsibilities, and surely an inquiry would disclose who they were and whether they should have given the Board the information that in fact they gave.

Mr. Body: Those who have complained about it are men of some distinction who ought to know all about a balance sheet and certainly ought to know about the dangers of remaining on a board when the prospective income was inadequate. An inquiry at this stage would not be helpful. I accept—I hope that the Special Report made this plain—that we looked upon the Bill with some discomfort, to use that fairly neutral word. I do not want to disturb the unanimity that was otherwise present at the meetings of the Select Committee. But given the assumption that the Board is insolvent and that the Port of Liver

pool has to carry on, passing the Bill is the only step that the House can take to further the prosperity of the port and to safeguard the security holders.

Mr. Gordon A. T. Bagier: I had hesitated to take part in the debate because, plainly, many Merseyside Members wish to take part, but I will be brief. I am moved to speak largely because of the concluding remark of the hon. Member for Holland with Boston (Mr. Body). The hon. Gentleman believes that the Bill is the only way by which the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board could be helped.
The more I took part in the work of the Committee and the more I heard, the more I realised that the only way that the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board could be helped lay in the solution which would have been provided by the last Government, namely, to bring it into public ownership. There was no shadow of doubt that the running of its affairs and the interference—to call it that—of the previous Government regarding charges and so on was done in a manner which took account of the national interest or regional interest, and it was certainly done with much wider factors in view than purely the position of the Board itself. What I found outstandingly wrong about the whole argument, however, was that in order to provide for the future, the Mr. Washers and Mr. Collinses of this world had to shoulder what the Bill involved. I found this profoundly disturbing.
Having been selected to serve on the Committee, naturally I had to look up the Second Reading debate and found out what it was all about. I found this disturbing reading, too. The hon. Member for the City of Chester (Mr. Temple), at the close of his speech moving the Second Reading, said:
The Bill has been brought forward after extensive consultations with all the various bodies who could possibly be concerned, and I hope very much, therefore, that it will prove more acceptable than the Bill which was withdrawn."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 27th April 1971; Vol 816, c. 317.]
The hon. Gentleman must have believed that when he said it, and I do not suggest otherwise, but the evidence as it unfolded before the Committee showed that it was just not so. The petitioners against the


Bill had not been consulted. People representative of the Mr. Washers and Mr. Collinses had not been consulted. There had been next to no consultation save that which took place with the Government Department itself. It became clear that the only people who had been consulted on the issue were the Government, and this on the question whether they could or would provide a bridging loan.

Mr. Temple: I know that the hon. Gentleman wishes to be fair. When I said it, I meant exactly what I said. He must appreciate that it was impossible to consult the small bondholders. There was no association of small bondholders in this instance to consult.

Mr. Bagier: One could hardly say that Barclays Bank was not a bondholder; it had £2 million in the Board. The petitioners who came before the Committee said that they had not been consulted. It is a matter of fact. I accept that the hon. Gentleman meant what he said and he believed that people had been consulted, but the evidence, as it was examined by counsel before the Committee, showed that there was no consultation except with the Government, and the Government were being asked to bail out the Board or to provide bridging loan facilities for a port which, looking on the favourable side, would go into surplus in 1973 onwards.
Another factor which influenced us was that the Government—I think it a great pity—had not had the guts to face up to the responsibility of putting this Measure through as a Public Bill, as it should be, or even as a Hybrid Bill. That they are hiding behind the Private Bill procedure to keep a national asset going is to their discredit.

Mr. John Wells: Good heavens.

Mr. Bagier: The hon Gentleman may say that, but let us look for a moment at what the Minister had to say on Second Reading. This is the Minister for Transport Industries:
The hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Mr. Ogden) passed me a poisoned chalice in the tribute which he so kindly paid me. I deny his allegation that the Bill has no friends, as I also firmly deny that this is a Government Bill. It is a Bill of the present Mersey Docks and Harbour Board, which is

fully responsible."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 27th April, 1971; Vol. 816, c. 352.]
He said that it was not a Government Bill, but that was just about the only matter of fact which he could have adduced on that score.
10.15 p.m.
In practice when a vote was taken on Second Reading it was very much a Government Bill. Out of a possible 14 Cabinet Members, no fewer than 11 voted for it. Out of a possible 21 Ministers not of Cabinet rank, 17 voted for it. Every one of the Whips, from the Chief Whip right down to the junior Whip, voted for it. Out of the payroll vote, 52 voted for the Bill—for a Private Bill at 10 o'clock at night. Then the right hon. Gentleman has the cheek to say that it was not a Government Bill. It is very much a Government Bill.
The main reason for the Government's introducing it in this fashion was to opt out of their responsibility for what is a national asset, dealing not only with Liverpool but with the exports and imports of this country. The charge against the Government is that they have failed to measure up to their responsibilities and deal properly with a national asset, in the way in which they were asked to do it by the chairman they appointed.
On the second day of the Committee hearings, Mr. Cuckney was asked, at Question 8 on page 8:
Plainly, if the Government had provided the assistance you were seeking, that would have meant you would not have had to have a Bill in these terms, would you? 
He replied:
It would have depended on the amount.
9. But not in these terms? A. No.
10. Obviously again that would have been preferable; that is why you were asking for it? A. Yes.
Of course, it was much preferable to bringing in a Bill like this, making the Mr. Washers and Mr. Collinses suffer. It was introduced to dodge the Government's responsibility. They did not want to be seen to be bailing the Board out. They had Rolls-Royce around their necks, they had trouble with Harland and Wolff, and they had to provide extra money for the Yarrow shipyard. Here were a Government who were going to be tough. The end result of their toughness is to make people like Mr. Washer and Mr. Collins suffer.
The Bill has been a most interesting experience for me. It has been one of the most controversial Private Bills the House has had for many years. I hope that the Government will see to it that no similar Bill is introduced because of the inaction of an extremely incompetent Administration.

Mr. John Wells: I will be extremely brief. I hope that hon. Members who served on the Select Committee will forgive me if I do not speak about their experience of the Bill. I want to direct my remarks to Clause 57, which crept in at a later stage, and sits somewhat uneasily in the main body of the Bill.
The history of the Clause, as I understand it, is that the British Waterways Board was somewhat perturbed about the intention in the Bill to close the Stanley Dock on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, the dock had been in existence—as had the Canal—for many years before the existence of the Mersey Docks and Harbour. It goes back, indeed, before the Act of 1857.
The fear I have is that the new company will be empowered after 31st December, 1973 to close the Stanley Dock. If it does, it will mean cutting the last canal inland waterway trans-Pennine route and this, from the point of view of the Inland Waterways Board, would be a great national disaster. Due to the extremely efficient petition of the British Waterways Board, the Clause has been added to the Bill, and I must congratulate the Board on having got it in. But let us consider for a moment what the Clause means: it means that after 31st December, 1973 the new company can close the Stanley Dock—I only say "can". If there is no agreement with the British Waterways Board, it can go to an independent arbitrator.
As I understand it, the independent arbitrator will deal with cash and will negotiate cash—that is to say, a cash compensation—from the new company to the British Waterways Board, and that Board will be paid a sum of money—£1, £10, £1 million. It will be paid cash and this will be cold comfort to the boat-owner who wants to use the last trans-Pennine route. Hon. Members on both sides who represent that part of the country have many boat-owner con

stituents, people from all walks of life, who like to use that route. If this last route is cut, the fact that the Waterways Board has been given a cash sum in compensation is no use to the boat-owners.
My only objective in raising this matter so late is to draw the attention of my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Mr. Temple) to the extremely unsatisfactory wording of this Clause, which means simply what it says—that if there is a dispute, cash will be paid. This is not good enough. I do not expect him to provide any answer tonight but I put this as a warning shot across the bows of successive Secretaries of State for the Environment in future, that they must support the British Waterways Board in its lawful attempts to keep the waterways open for canal users.
I apologise for making what is apparently a very narrow point in this wide-ranging debate when so many of our constituents have suffered financially, but I hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will take on my underlying thoughts.

Mr. Spriggs: I want to say how much most of us on this side of the House welcomed the speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer), who spoke from experience as an employee of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board. I was also interested to hear the Bill referred to as having been presented to all interested bodies. Yet, according to the research I have done, those employed by the Board knew nothing about the Bill. They have not seen a single word of it. They have not been approached about it. It is incredible that, in this day and age, when both sides of the House talk about consultative procedures and are always ready to advise workers and managements to apply and adhere to consultative machinery, an important Bill like this should be introduced without the staff knowing anything about it although their livelihoods depend upon their employment on the Mersey Docks.
The Special Report of the Select Committee says:
Your Committee did not consider that these amendments go far enough to protect the small security holders.
Opinions about this matter have been, are being and will continue to be


expressed. Not one of us enjoyed taking away the capital value of a person's life savings.
This has been looked upon as a trustee investment. If Parliament allows the Bill to go through without amendment, if we allow the Board to change or take away the real value of an investment, we are allowing legal robbery. Two or three constituents have written to me about

their life savings. One is an old lady, an ex-teacher. She had £1,000 invested with the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board. She came to see me at my Parliamentary interviews, pleading for something to be done. I tell the Government that there are many Members on both sides of the House prepared to vote against this Bill passing through this House in a manner which will allow the Board to rob these people of their life savings.

Mr. Ian Percival: I should like to echo the tributes that have been offered to the Select Committee for the care, time and thought that it put into its work on this Bill. I was able to listen to a little of its proceedings and anyone who listened to or read the proceedings would I am sure wish to pay a warm tribute to it, as I do.
I want to confine myself to one narrow point, followed by a number of observations on the general principle. The narrow point arises from something said by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Transport Industries about the position of these bonds as trustee securities. He said that bond holders were not entitled, because these were trustee securities, to treat them as though they were guaranteed by the Government. Strictly speaking, that is correct as a matter of law and as a matter of practice but there is another aspect to which he did not refer. This is a Board, four members of which have for a long time been appointed by successive Governments. The right hon. and learned Member for Liverpool, Edge Hill (Sir A. Irvine) would I am sure agree with me when I say that I hope we have not reached the situation when it may be said that although the Government may appoint directors to a board the public should not think that because they do so that gives any additional security.
I should like to think that when Governments take upon themselves the right and duty to appoint members to a board such as this, a board administering the affairs of an outfit the bonds issued by which are trustee securities, then the public is entitled to say that the Government are assuming some responsibility for the conduct of that outfit and for ensuring that the public is acquainted with the situation if anything is going wrong which may operate to the detriment of the bond holders and which might cause the kind of losses that we know many have suffered.
On the general principle I hope that the House will remember exactly what it is doing when it passes the Bill (because I am sure that it will since we have no real alternative)—I hope that we will face up squarely to what we are doing. In the Bill we are changing the law so that a particular debtor may be entitled to write

off an unspecified part of its obligations in order to remain in business. I hope that every hon. Member will always feel that that is an odious and shameful thing to do, and that it should be done only in circumstances of the most extreme and clear-cut justification.
10.30 p.m.
In this instance my right hon. Friend and his colleagues in the Government justify their actions by saying that the Government must stop helping lame ducks. I have always believed that this is a misunderstanding of this situation and a misapplication of a principle with which I wholeheartedly agree, namely, that the day has come when Governments must stop helping lame ducks indiscriminately. But helping a lame duck is exactly what the Bill is designed to do. The lame duck is the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board. The Bill is designed to help the Board to remain in business. It can be helped to remain in business by one of two ways: either by the general taxpayer finding the money to enable that to be done, or by cancelling its obligations to particular classes of creditors. The Bill enables it to stay in business at the expense of particular classes of creditors—because that is what the bond holders are. They are not investors. They have lent money to the Board. They do not have any share in any increased prosperity, if there is any, and, therefore, they are not expected to take the risk of matters going the other way. They are creditors who are entitled in law to get their money back.
My right hon. Friend the Minister said that they have a national interest like everybody else. So they have; I accept that. But, like everybody else, they are members of the general body of taxpayers, so that if the hardship were spread over the general body of taxpayers they would take their share of it. We have got the proportions wrong. This Bill is changing the law to enable this lame duck to stay in business by cancelling its obligation to particular people. In these circumstances, the general taxpayer should—and I think would be quite happy to—accept the burden instead of its being placed on the shoulders of particular people, many of whom are very poorly off. I do not believe that what I am suggesting would in anyway


breach the Government's policy of not assisting lame ducks.
My right hon. Friend said that if the hopes of profits which are now held materialise the Bill may not do as much harm to the bond holders as was at one time thought. I beg him to realise that it has already done immeasurable harm to many of them. No relief for them is yet in sight. I am unable to discover anything in the Bill, even as amended, which would enable a sensible quotation in the bonds to be restored. I do not know how my constituents, who may now need to be selling them to maintain their standard of living, can sell them. I do not know how a market in them can be restored. There is still a large measure of uncertainty.
I hope my right hon. Friend will not think that those of us who have been urging the Government to do more are satisfied with the present situation. The amendments are an improvement, but I hope the Government will go on seeking for more improvements and not let the matter rest where it is.

Mr. David James: Before my hon. and learned Friend sits down, may I ask whether I am right in my understanding that these unfortunate people will not even qualify for capital gains relief to set this loss against any subsequent gain, because they are creditors and not equity shareholders.

Mr Percival: It is an awful admission for a lawyer to make, but I do not know the answer to that question. I want to stick to my train of thought. Let us not under-estimate the knock which these people, many of whom are ill able to afford it, have suffered and will suffer. I hope that my right hon. Friends will go on trying to find ways of alleviating that hardship, and I hope one day to persuade them that they can do so without breaching in anyway the policy which they have adopted and with which I agree. I hope also that the board will give the bondholders every opportunity to participate in such revival as there may be by ensuring that everything that is written off is made up in equity.
Lastly may I echo the tributes that have been paid to Mr. Cuckney. I have

had several meetings with him, and he has been the essence of patience and courtesy. Many hon. Members have discussed the matter with him, and I am sure everyone has shared my experience, that he has answered every question put to him and seen us every time we wanted to see him. The one piece of brightness I am able to convey to my constituents is that, whatever may be said about the past, Mr. Cuckney has a great determination to put the future right, and I wish him well in his endeavours.

Mr. Simon Mahon: The hon. and learned Member for Southport (Mr. Percival), my parliamentary neighbour, has voiced the sentiments of hon. Members on both sides of the House. When I hear such universal condemnation of the Bill, I wonder who will vote for it. We are voting simply for an improvement, but morally I do not think that a single hon. Member could honourably support the Bill. I find great difficulty in supporting it, but I will support it in the hope that there will be an improvement and that justice will come soon to the poor people who put their life savings into the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board and trusted it as we all did. We trusted it as we trusted the Bank of England and to be a member of the Board was the height of a Merseyside man's ambition.
I have often criticised employers on Merseyside, and have had good reason to do so, but there is nothing more regrettable than saying something about a person which is obviously untrue.
When I hear these sad and sometimes bitter things being said about members of the Board, I remember other times and other men. Liverpool was not always in the state it is in today, and it will not always be in this state. I have trust in the people of Liverpool, despite all the hardships that we have had to endure. I believe that the Port of Liverpool will again become great. If I know this, surely the Government know it.
Bootle's civil motto is "Respice-aspice-prospice", which means "Look to the past, see to the present and look to the future". This is what the Government should do. They should not be talking about Liverpool and the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board as "lame ducks". We all know that people have a bad


time occasionally, whether they be companies or individuals. I have been in public life for a long time and many like me have done all we can to help lame ducks and those who are unfortunate. I do not like the term "lame duck" and I like it even less when it is applied to Liverpool.
When considering the people of Mersey-side, do not smile at us or pass us by. We are the people of England and we have kept this place going when no other part of the country could keep it going. When we talk about lame ducks we should remember another great British gentleman who served his country as no statesman has ever served his country before, and he used the phrase "Some chicken, some neck". We should remember those words in the context of this great port.
I knew this Board for many years. I wish Mr. Cuckney and his friends well in their difficult task. I say this sincerely. However, it is hitting below the belt to talk about people who are dead and gone. I do not believe that any member of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board has ever had anything but the best interests of Merseyside at heart. I believe this sincerely. I know from personal knowledge that the last Chairman of the Board had nothing but the best will of the people of Liverpool. I have been in the Labour movement all my life and I joined with others in suggesting the setting up of a committee to try to improve many of the things on the docks and in the Pool. That committee was not to include merely trade unionists, but people from the Church and other sections of public life, and we wanted it to look at the labour relations and the conditions in the port.
It is wrong to impute motives to people when one is not sure about the situation. There is an obligation on the Government to undertake some form of inquiry. I do not wish the new Board any harm, but things have been said about the old Board which could be true or false. There is no doubt that nationalisation, which I believe in, had some effect on the policy carried out by the Board at that time. I will not go into details, but it has been said that there are 42,000 unemployed in Liverpool. I can remember when the dock force numbered 20,000. It is now down to 10,000.

Job opportunity is going. Therefore, we want the new Board to look at these matters very closely.
10.45 p.m.
I support my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer), who spoke about the South End Docks, and he said that a third of the imports and exports of the port of Liverpool went through those docks. But they are three miles long. On our side of the river, there are seven miles of docks. My hon. Friend was talking about the South Docks. But they are not just a dock. There is a line of docks, with enough facilities probably to keep the country going. I can name them, one after the other.
The position needs consideration. The Minister referred to the national interest. Apart from the economic viability of the port, there is the national interest. Where do we put ships if we are in trouble? Anyone who has seen a jammed-up port knows that we must be careful not to take precipitate action.
I did not intend to speak in this debate, but I am glad that I did. Maidstone is a long way from Bootle. What is the interest of the hon. Member for Maidstone (Mr. John Wells) in the Stanley Dock? What was the hon. Gentleman saying about the Liverpool-Leeds Canal? The hon. Members for Liverpool, Kirkdale (Mr. Dunn), Scotland (Mr. Marsden), Exchange (Mr. Parry) and Bootle are right in one respect if they are wrong in every other: the Liverpool-Leeds Canal, over the seven miles between the Stanley Dock and my constituency, has not carried a single barge in the last 10 years. It is an open sewer which, in one period of five years, claimed the lives of 28 children in my constituency and those of other hon. Members. Today, we are told that it is the beautiful trans-Pennine chain to the Mersey. It is never used.
This Government could do with a little popularity at the moment. If they got together with the Board and used the powers contained in the Bill, they would make themselves a little more popular in Merseyside than they are at the moment. The canal is anything but a thing of beauty and a joy for ever.
Labour relations in Liverpool depend on the confidence that the new Board


can establish. If the people of Mersey-side do not have confidence in the continuity of employment and improved working conditions, the new Board will be a failure. That is the very last result that my colleagues and I want to see.

Mr. Marsden: I represent a Liverpool constituency which takes in a long slice of the Liverpool docks. Many thousands of my constituents are Liverpool dockers. To protect their jobs and their livelihoods, I should not vote against this Bill, even if the opportunity presented itself. However, I want to place on record the fact that I dislike the Bill and consider it a bad one. As hon. Members have said, it makes no provision for the future of the port.
The Minister sought to reassure the House by quoting Clause 8(1)(a) and (b) which, he says, goes a long way to meeting our request for some provision for the future of the port. The Liverpool City Council does not think so. Its Policy and Finance Committee, at its meeting on 23rd June,
will be considering particularly the nature of the duty of the proposed new Mersey Docks and Harbour Company to continue to operate its undertaking, and the methods whereby the company may be wound up and the disposal of its assets authorised.
I sincerely hope that the Minister will comment on and look further into this matter.

Mr. Robert Parry: Like my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle (Mr. Simon Mahon), I did not intend to participate in the debate. I shall keep my remarks brief having regard to the lateness of the hour and the obvious hope of other hon. Members to take part.
The hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Mr. Tilney), who is not in his place, seemed to blame the Labour Government for the difficulties now facing the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board. If he has examined the minutes of the Committee he will have noted the concern expressed by the Chairman, his hon. Friend the Member for Holland with Boston (Mr. Body), about the responsibility of the previous Administration. I have not had an opportunity to study the minutes in detail, as I saw them only a couple of hours ago. I support the

protest made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Dell) about the availability of documents and information. I refute the allegation of the hon. Member for Wavertree about blame attaching to the Labour Government. I believe that a certain amount of responsibility lies with the previous board.
My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. English) pointed out the degree of responsibility which must be borne by certain members of the previous Board. It is generally accepted by hon. Members on this side of the House that, due to the vested interests of some of the Board members, port charges were deliberately kept low. Obviously those members were expecting the Labour Government to nationalise the docks. Following the election last June and the return of a Conservative Government, that hope disappeared.
It is no coincidence that the financial difficulties of the Board were first brought to public notice immediately after the General Election. In the annual report, published and presented in April, 1970, no mention was made of any financial crisis. Yet, less than three months later, Merseyside Members of Parliament were informed of the great danger of the Board going bust. I believe that the charge against some of the directors of culpable negligence is justified.
The real blame now lies with the Government. Their cynical attitude towards lame ducks seems to apply particularly to areas which have a strong Labour representation. We have had Mersey-side; now we have Clydeside. Through the Government's policies, these areas, which have always had their fair share of unemployment, distress and depression, will suffer further unemployment. I see nothing in the Bill which will do anything to help to solve permanently the problems for the future of the Port of Liverpool.

Mr. Michael Fidler: I shall find the greatest difficulty in supporting the Bill, for two reasons in particular. I am speaking for the many in my constituency, the elderly, the impecunious, the retired, those who had sufficient faith in the Board to imagine that, by lending their money to it, they were doing so with the same security with which they might have


placed that money with local authority stock.

Mr. Dell: It is complete hypocrisy for the hon. Gentleman to say this now. If hon. Members opposite had been prepared to say on Second Reading that they were not prepared to support the Bill, it would never have made progress.

Mr. Fidler: The right hon. Member may know more about hypocrisy than I do. I am simply giving vent to an opinion which I have expressed in communications to the Minister; I have been consistent in expressing this view all along.
I agree with my right hon. Friend in wanting to see the Board's viability assured in the Government's plans, provided that he will try to ensure two things on behalf of the investors, possibly limited to those who have invested less than £1,000.
First, if there is to be any delay in paying bond holders, there should be an undertaking that, no matter how long that delay, the payment when eventually made will be 100 per cent. Second, interest payments throughout this extended period of repayment should be maintained at regular intervals on the basis on which the money was originally invested—money which in many cases represents life savings. I hope that my right hon. Friend will press these matters on the Board before deciding to support it.

Mr. Heffer: Will the hon. Gentleman follow the logic of his argument and actually vote against the Bill?

Mr. Fidler: I said that I hesitated to lend my support to the Bill, and for reasons advanced by some hon. Gentlemen opposite, my hesitation is due to the fact that I do not want to see any impediment placed in the way of the Board's continued operations. Before we make that possible, however, I should be grateful for the two assurances for which I have asked.

Mr. Temple: This is not a Second Reading debate, but a debate on the question of whether consideration of the Bill should now proceed.
The Mersey Docks and Harbour Board is an important national institution. I know that that is just the way in which

the promoters of the Bill regard their obligations towards a continuance of its activities. I will confine myself to replying to those points which directly concern the Bill. My right hon. Friend has made the Government's position clear. On behalf of the promoters, I should like to thank the Chairman and members of the Select Committee.
On Second Reading, I said that few things about this legislation were strictly normal. I know that many of the events have been unprecedented, but that does not in the least mean that proposals by the promoters have been in any way out of order. Indeed, they have been particularly careful to keep entirely within the rules of the Private Bill procedure. It was only this procedure which was open to the Board to reconstruct the capital of the company.
The right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Dell) said that uncertainty over the future of the port is continuing. I am glad to say that that uncertainty was removed by the speeches of my hon. Friends the Members for Holland with Boston (Mr. Body) and for Hove (Mr. Maddan). Those two, and indeed, other hon. Members who served on the Select Committee, formed that view, I believe, because under the wise guidance of the present chairman there was more than a good chance of things improving very considerably.
11.0 p.m.
We have listened to a high level of debate on this vital matter. I congratulate the hon. Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. English), who unfortunately is not in his place at the moment. He congratulated the promoters on particular things they have tried to do, with the exception of one thing. He criticised what the promoters were doing to existing security holders. I can assure the House that the promoters are equally concerned about the future welfare of security holders in the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board.
This matter was also referred to by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Southport (Mr. Percival), who has been very solicitous in the cause of small bond holders. He and the hon. Member for Nottingham, West stated that in the reconstruction there is to be provision for issuance of equity capital. The outlook


seems reasonably good, although I would not say that it is rosy. As I said on Second Reading, statutory companies such as the Felixstowe Company and the Manchester Ship Canal Company have proved satisfactory investments for equity shareholders. I know that it is the intention of the new Board to try its level best to bring about a situation in which a substantial proportion of the capital which appears to be lost may be recouped.
I shall briefly outline the way in which the promoters have endeavoured to meet the points suggested to them by the Chairman and members of the Select Committee. I know that the first point, recovery of quotation for the bonds, was very much in the mind of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for South-port. I think it has been admitted by the promoters throughout that a quotation for the bonds cannot be secured until the reorganisation scheme has been approved. It was a criticism on Second Reading that the scheme would not be approved until the end of 1974. I am happy to be able to inform the House that this first recommendation by the Select Committee, which was accepted by the Board, has been implemented and the moratorium period has been cut by a year so that in fact the scheme should be completed by the end of 1973.
This Bill is better than the first that was introduced by the Board. Alterations have been made. I mention this because of criticism of what I said about consultation. Consultation did take place with the big bondholders with reference to the first Bill. After criticism of that Bill, it was withdrawn. Because there was not the same objection to the second Bill, it was thought that those bondholders were more favourably disposed to it.

Mr. Dell: Surely this legend that the first Bill was withdrawn because of the lack of consultation cannot be sustained. It was withdrawn because it placed a maximum limit on the amount of writedown. The main difference between this and that Bill is that in this there is no limit. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman would address himself to that.

Mr. Temple: I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman. That is exactly why the first Bill was withdrawn. In the first Bill there was an absolute obligation to write down the capital by 30 per cent. and there was no provision for the issuance of any equity capital. Those reasons were considered by the promoters of the Bill and, I hope, it is agreed by the big bond holders that the second Bill is more satisfactory than the first on that ground.
The second criticism which was made by the Select Committee and which has been met by the promoters was that interest could be increased by the Board at any time during the moratorium period, but now certain stronger words have been inserted. Speaking on behalf of the promoters, I do not think that those stronger words are strictly necessary, but we have put them in to accord with the wishes of the Select Committee.
The third and fourth criticisms are linked. They concern the protection of the bondholders who will be issued with ordinary stock. When the scheme is produced, a form of procedure will be adopted which will be different from that which I outlined on Second Reading. Each different class of bondholder will have a special meeting convened for it, and it will require a three-quarters majority of the bondholders to be in agreement with that scheme.
If there is disagreement about the scheme proposed by the Board, that scheme will be referred not to an independent expert, but to the Chancery Court. I always preferred the independent expert because I thought that finality and precision would be brought to the determination rather more quickly than by recourse to the Chancery Court. With due reference to my legal friends, I thought that reference to the Chancery Court would result in the proceedings being rather more protracted, and that is why I could not give a specific undertaking that the moratorium period would end at the end of 1973. Albeit taking these things into consideration, the change has been made.
The fifth criticism concerned restricting the power to issue fresh stock. I do not think that this provision was strictly necessary, but the Select Committee wished this restriction to be included and


the issuance of further ordinary stock will be only after approval by a special resolution.
The sixth criticism concerned the appointment of a trade union director. There has been a trade union director on the Board for a long time. The Board would always wish to appoint a trade union director, and the promoters readily agree to this proposal.
The seventh and last criticism concerned the exclusion from the Board of persons who had been directors of bodies which had failed to fulfil their financial obligations. This is a matter which has attracted a good deal of attention. The promoters made their position perfectly clear and they have objected to the Amendment. The new Board will be elected by the security holders who will have it in their hands to select their representatives. The promoters certainly had to accept what turned out to be the unanimous decision of the Committee, but they were unhappy about it. I deplore the extravagant language which has been used in criticism of members of the previous Board.

Mr. Body: Would not my hon. Friend agree that if I borrowed a sum of money from him knowing that I might not be able to repay him, I would certainly be culpable? Moreover, if I borrowed money from him in exchange for a bond, might it not be something a little worse than culpable?

Mr. Temple: All I would say to my hon. Friend is that reconstructions have had to be made before in all kinds of companies and corporations. The Promoters look upon this as a reconstruction.
Having endeavoured to meet my hon. Friend's point by their proposals with regard to the issuance of equity capital at the end of the day, I hope very much that the explanations of the promoters will be acceptable and that we can proceed with the consideration stage of the Bill.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill, as amended in the Committee, considered accordingly.

New Clause 1

PART REDEMPTION DURING THE MORATORIUM PERIOD

46A.—(1) Notwithstanding the provisions of paragraph (a) of subsection (1) of section 46 (Moratorium in relation to new securities and borrowing) of this Act, on the application in writing of a person whose name appears in the record as an original debenture holder for repayment in part under this section of the new securities held by him which have at the time of repayment fallen due for redemption and upon producing such evidence as the directors may require that—

(a) he was entitled in the income tax year immediately preceding the date of the application to relief under section 6 or section 7 of the Income and Corporation Taxes Act 1970; and
(b) on 12th February 1971 he was and has at all times since that date been the sole holder of the bonds which under section 38 (Conversion of capital) of this Act were converted into the new securities to which the application relates;

the Company shall pay to him in part redemption of the new securities so held one-half of the amount due on redemption or £500, whichever is the less:

Provided that—

(i) this section shall apply only to the new securities which fall due for redemption before the end of the moratorium period; and
(ii) the maximum amount payable by the Company under this section in respect of all the new securities held by the same original debenture holder shall not exceed £500.

(2)(a) An application under subsection (1) of this section shall not be valid unless it is made—

(i) in the case of the new securities which have fallen due for redemption before the appointed day—within 90 days after the appointed day;
(ii) in the case of each of the eleven classes of the new securities which next fall due for redemption after the appointed day—within 90 days after the appointed day; and
(iii) in the case of each other class of the new securities—180 days before the redemption date specified in column (4) of Part I of Schedule 2 to this Act of the class to which the application relates;

(b) the Company shall give notice in writing to the holders of the new securities to which subsection (1) of this section applies drawing attention to the provisions of this section and the right, in the circumstances set out in the said subsection (1), to apply for part redemption of the new securities and the said notice shall be given—

(i) to the original debenture holders covered by sub-paragraphs (i) and (ii) of paragraph (a) of this subsection—within 7 days after the appointed day; and


(ii) to the original debenture holders covered by sub-paragraph (iii) of the said paragraph (a)—not less than 270 days before the redemption date of the respective class set out in column (4) of Part I of the said Schedule 2.

(3) A holder of the new securities whose holding is reduced in part under subsection (1) of this section shall be entitled to interest due thereon in accordance with the terms of the holding, as varied by paragraph (b) of subsection (1) of the said section 46, in respect of the full amount of the holding up to the date of part redemption and thereafter on the balance of the holding not redeemed.

(4) In making an application under subsection (1) of this section the holder shall forward the certificate for the holding to the Company together with proof that paragraph (a) of subsection (1) of this section applies to him and as soon as practicable after the part redemption has been made the Company shall issue a new certificate for the balance of the holding remaining unredeemed.—[Mr. Temple.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

Mr. Temple: I beg to move, That the Clause be read a Second time.
The new Clause could not be inserted in the Bill in Committee, although the content of it was a direct recommendation of the—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Miss Harvie Anderson): Order. I think it would be for the convenience of the House if we were to consider with new Clause 1 Amendment No. 23, in Clause 47, page 27, line 36, at end insert:
'and shall take into account any part redemption of the new securities under section 46A (Part redemption during the moratorium period) of this Act'.
and Amendment No. 24, in page 28, line 9, at end insert:
'and takes into account any part redemption of the new securities under the said section 46A'.

Mr. English: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. If it would help to shorten proceedings, we all realise that this is consequential upon the Money Resolution.

Mr. Temple: I have something to say on behalf of the promoters about the new Clause. Its object is to help small income bondholders whose bonds mature before the scheme. I will not go into the details of the Clause, but it has been drawn strictly in accordance with the advice of the members of the Select Committee. I readily admit that the Clause is open

to criticism, but it has been drawn for those reasons.
It may add complications to the ultimate scheme because it will be a factor which will have to be taken into account in drafting the reorganisation scheme of the capital. However, the promoters hope very much that the new Clause and what it seeks to do will be of material assistance to small bondholders. In that spirit I hope that the House will accept the new Clause.

Mr. Dell: Would the hon. Gentleman say a little more about the new Clause? The difficulty is that many people who do not understand the language in which it is couched, and, in particular, what "small income relief" is, might think this was a substantial concession to the interests of bondholders and would lead to some of them being paid out a substantial proportion of their money before the end of the moratorium. As I understand it, the new Clause is of virtually no significance and is likely to help very few people indeed. The hon. Gentleman owes it to the House to state the promoters' appreciation of the new Clause and what effect it will have. How many people will be involved? What sum of money is involved? Is the new Clause worth putting in the Bill?
The hon. Gentleman said that the promoters did not like it very much because it might complicate the scheme. What does it involve for those who lent money to the Board? Who are likely to benefit? Or are we putting the new Clause in for the sake of form, or to pretend that we are doing something?

11.15 p.m.

Mr. English: I did not intend to speak on the new Clause, and I shall not take long now, because I said most of what I wanted to say on the Money Resolution, but I must comment on the observation of the hon. Member for the City of Chester (Mr. Temple) that the Clause is drawn in accordance with the advice of the Committee. I thought I had made plain earlier that that means the advice of two members of the Committee—plus the casting vote of one of them—and that the other two members of the Committee wanted to go much further and do something far more substantial. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Dell) pointed out, the Clause does not do much.
The main difficulty is that the Money Resolution restricts the nature of the Amendment which may be moved. The hon. Member for the City of Chester suggests that the promoters did not like this proposal. The promoters did not like anything on this point. They made a series of suggestions but said that they were not putting any of them forward. One, for example, was for a trust fund to be set up to deal with hard cases, but how trustees would have made their decisions was by no means clear. The promoters left it entirely to the Committee. Let us be clear on that.

Mr. Temple: I am afraid that I fell into the old trap. Having been encouraged to do so, I moved the Clause briefly, and now I am accused of not having explained it fully. I meant no discourtesy to the House. I took the matter shortly because it had been suggested from both sides that I move it crisply. I shall now give a rather fuller explanation and cover the points raised by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Dell) and his hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. English).
Any partial repayment takes place only during the moratorium period, which is now a relatively short period. To a large extent, because it was thought that a Clause of this type would complicate the ultimate scheme, there was a degree of reluctance on the part of the promoters. Also, they were baffled about finding a form of words which would both be equitable and not go too far. They therefore relied on and followed the recommendations of the Committee. As the hon. Member for Nottingham, West said, the Clause follows the Money Resolution.
I come now to the points raised by the right hon. Gentleman. The Clause is designed to help those persons who receive small income relief under Section 6 or Section 7 of the Income Tax Act, 1970. Section 6 deals with small income relief for all persons irrespective of age, and, as I interpret it—not being a tax lawyer—it appears to restrict that relief to those with incomes of £450 or less. Section 7 relates to relief for persons over 65 with small incomes.
It is the intention of the Board to circulate bondholders and advise them of claims which they might make. To

that extent, we hope very much to pick up all the small bondholders who might be in a position to put in claims to the Board for this immediate repayment, to a maximum of £500 and restricted to 50 per cent. of their holding.
The right hon. Gentleman asked whether the promoters had been able to make an estimate of the number of bondholders and of the amount of money in which the Board might be involved. No estimate whatever can be given of either of those factors. The incomes of recipients of interest are never known to a board. It is only when the Board has issued a circular that it will find out the position. I think I could hazard a guess that the number of bond holders concerned will not be very great. The Board will be concerned with only certain categories which should be redeemed during the moratorium period. I do not think that the amount of money will be very great either. This is purely guesswork on my part. The promoters are not in a position to form a judgment until such time as they have circulated the bond holders.
The scheme is open to criticism, but the promoters have introduced it with the best of good will to meet the point made to them by the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause read a Second time, and added to the Bill.

Clause 2

INTERPRETATION

Mr. Temple: I beg to move Amendment No. 1, in page 3, leave out lines 29 to 35, and insert:
' "existing harbour loans" means the loans secured by mortgages granted by the Board for moneys borrowed by it under section 33 (Further borrowing powers for works and conservancy purposes) of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board Act 1966 before 27th November 1970 and includes the loans not so secured made after that date in pursuance of an agreement made before that date, all of which loans are specified in column (1) of Part IV of Schedule 2 to this Act;'.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I think that it would be for the convenience of the House if we discussed at the same time Amendments Nos. 2, 6, 12 to 21, 25, 26 and 27.

Mr. Temple: This series of Amendments follows exactly on the money Resolution, putting into effect the fact that the Government commitment to lend the Board £1·2 million before 27th November—the money was not actually paid over by the Government till after 27th November—will not rank as a "priority" borrowing. The promoters accept these proposals. I know that they will be for the benefit not only of the Board but of the bond holders as well. I trust that they will have the approval of the House.

Amendment agreed to.

Further Amendment made: No. 2, in page 4, line 7, leave out 'mortgage' and insert 'harbour'.—[Mr. Temple.]

Clause 8

GENERAL DUTIES

Mr. English: I beg to move Amendment No. 3, in page 9, line 33, after 'to' insert
'operate the port and docks of Liverpool and to'.
I am glad that the Minister for Transport Industries gave us the assurance that he did earlier in speaking on the Money Resolution. Had he not given it, I think this is the one Amendment that I and my hon. Friends would have been very keen on. The Committee was assured in evidence that the present Board is under a statutory duty to operate the port and docks of Liverpool. We took this in the general sense, not as meaning that each individual dock had to stay open but that the port as a whole had to stay open. It is certainly true that there is no provision in the existing Acts for the liquidation of the Board or the docks as an undertaking. That is precisely one of the reasons why the Bill is being brought before us.
It is not clear that under the Bill that obligation, whatever it may be in strict law, continues. For example, the Clause says:
(1) It shall be the duty of the Company—
(a) to take such action as it considers necessary or desirable for or incidental to the maintenance, operation and improvement of—

(i) the docks; and
(ii) the conservancy of the port of Liverpool…".


It is not clear to us that such action as the company which will replace the board considers necessary or desirable for the operation of the port is the same thing as the operation of the port. The present situation under the law is that the existing Board cannot be liquidated except by recourse to this House and to another place.
I realise that the Minister cannot give an off-the-cuff answer because the legal point is somewhat technical. However, we should like to know that the present obligation, whatever its extent, will not be reduced as a result of the passage of this Bill through Parliament. I took it that that was what the Minister meant; namely, that the existing obligation will continue as a statutory duty on the new company to operate the port, and that it will not be possible at some future time for the new company to liquidate itself and to close the Port of Liverpool without recourse to the Government of the day and to this and another place. This is the gist of our point. If we can be assured that this basic point will be put in in another place, I think we shall be reasonably happy.

Mr. James A. Dunn: The Amendment seeks to lay down certain criteria. We were obliged for the Minister's assurance on the general considerations affecting the Bill. Indeed, had we not received those assurances, there would have been a very different response, because this matter hinges on a wealth of other matters of consequence. We are fearful that the Clause, as drafted, does not place an obligation on the newly-organised Board and company to discharge the same functions as have been discharged hitherto.
I wish to make two general references. The first is on the Pilotage Order. If these specific obligations were not placed on the new company, the Pilotage Order, 1920, could go by default because there would be nobody to undertake that responsibility.
My second point relates to continuation of employment in the port. I hope that the Minister will make certain that his assurance is discharged in another place and that obligations will be embodied in much stronger terms than they are at present.

Mr. Heffer: The Minister was not here at the time but it was said that the Liverpool City Council may well be holding a special meeting on this specific point. Perhaps I can quote a letter of 17th June this year which was sent by the City of Liverpool to all the members of the City Council. The letter is headed "Mersey Docks and Harbour Bill" and reads:
The Policy and Finance Committee, at its meeting to be held on 23rd June, 1971, will be considering the Council's attitude towards the Mersey Docks and Harbour Bill, deposited in Parliament in the present Session by the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board. The Committee will be considering particularly the nature of the duty of the proposed new Mersey Docks and Harbour company to continue to operate its undertaking, and the methods whereby the company may be wound up and the disposal of its assets authorised. If the Committee should consider that these provisions are not satisfactory, consideration will be given to the question of petitioning against the Bill.
It goes on to point out that a special meeting of the City Council, if the committee thinks necessary, will be held on Wednesday, 30th June.
The right hon. Gentleman should know about this. It is not only hon. Members on this side of the House who are concerned but members of all three parties on the Finance Committee of the City of Liverpool. If he could make a suitable statement on this it would satisfy the Liverpool City Council as well as hon. Members.

11.30 p.m.

Mr. Peyton: I am much obliged to the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) for calling my attention to that last point and for the understanding way in which he did it.
I must put this with some care since I am reluctant to give an undertaking which I cannot honour completely. Let me explain why I cannot accept this Amendment.
In the view of the Government it would place too positive a duty, too much of a limiting influence upon their discretion. I do not believe that this is the intention behind the Amendment.
I do not believe that it was in the minds of the promoters to reduce the duty upon them to run the port of Liverpool. It is certainly not the Government's intention to connive at bringing about a state

of affairs whereby they would not be consulted should the company be minded to seek to wind up its newly-found business. I would be glad to look at this in full, in collaboration with the promoters of the Bill, to see whether it is necessary to give weight to this point, and, if necessary, to introduce an Amendment in another place. I hope that this will satisfy the Opposition. I understand the anxiety here, and will look at this with the utmost care.

Mr. Dell: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that assurance. Consequently, I would certainly recommend my hon. Friends not to divide on the Amendment. Therefore, the Government Whips can inform all members of the Government who have been standing by to support this Private Bill that they can go home, their duty having been done.
The right hon. Gentleman should appreciate that it is not at all clear from what he has said why he is unable to accept the Amendment. Earlier he said that if the Amendment were accepted it would mean that the new statutory company would have to operate all the docks in Liverpool and, therefore, would not be able to close any of them as may be economically necessary from time to time. I do not understand why, if that is the consequence of the Amendment, it is not a consequence of the existing wording, which says:
It shall be the duty of the Company—
(a) to take such action as it considers necessary or desirable for or incidental to the maintenance, operation and improvement of—
(i) the docks".
I do not know why the word "docks" in that context is more flexible than the word "docks" in the Amendment. There seems to be some reduction in the statutory duty.

Mr. Peyton: The Amendment contains the words:
operate the port and docks".
I am concerned whether "the port" might not be a somewhat comprehensive phrase which would mean the port of Liverpool as it now exists.

Mr. Dell: That is a somewhat extreme interpretation of my hon. Friend's Amendment. However, if the Minister


is right, we should be prepared to accept alternative words which nevertheless gave us the guarantee that there was a continuing statutory duty on the statutory company. The Bill is worded in a very subjective form. It seems to take away from the Board's previous obligations. We should like the right hon. Gentleman to look at the matter. In view of his assurance, I think that my hon. Friend will be prepared to withdraw the Amendment.

Mr. Temple: On behalf of the promoters, may I tell the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Dell) that the promoters' legal advisers quite independently came to exactly the same view of the Amendment as the Government's legal advisers. They advised me at an early hour this morning that acceptance of the Amendment would mean—and I am sure that this was not its intention—that the whole of the dock organisation as it exists would have to be maintained in perpetuity. I had no reason to suppose that that was the intention of the hon. Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. English).
May I give an undertaking on behalf of the promoters to reinforce the assurance given by my right hon. Friend the Minister? During a conference which I had with the promoters earlier tonight, they made it clear to me that they would willingly give the assurance required, but they did not think it was necessary.
I draw attention to two precedents. The responsibility of the British Transport Docks Board is
to provide to such extent as they may think expedient port facilities at harbours owned and managed by them".
The Port of London Authority has a statutory obligation
to provide, maintain, operate and improve such port and harbour facilities as they"—
that is, the Board—
consider necessary or desirable".
Those are highly respectable precedents. They are followed to a large extent by Clause 8 of the Bill. I give the assurance that we shall look at the matter again to see whether it is necessary to strengthen the provision, but we believe that it is adequate as it stands.

Mr. Heffer: The hon. Gentleman said that the Port of London Authority had a

statutory obligation to do certain things. That is precisely our point: no statutory obligation is clearly laid down in the Bill. That is why we want something on the lines of the Amendment written into the Bill.

Mr. Temple: Clause 8 clearly says that
It shall be the duty of the Company 
to do certain things. A clear duty is laid down. I should have thought that "duty" and "obligation" were synonyms. I am not a lawyer, but I have given an undertaking which I hope will be acceptable.

Mr. English: I am much happier with the Minister's assurance than I am with the last remarks of the hon. Member for the City of Chester (Mr. Temple).
An implied repeal of the existing statutory duty has been imported into the Bill. The existing statutory duty was in an Act which had no provision for the liquidation of the Board concerned. Consequently, to get rid of anything contained in it, the promoters had to present a Bill such as this. Here we have a provision which, among other things, replaces that Board by a company which, like other companies, can be liquidated. If it is liquidated, its business can be carried on by someone else, or it may fail, as happened with Rolls-Royce.

Clause 8 states:
such action as it considers necessary or desirable for or incidental to the maintenance, operation and improvement".
As the hon. Member for City of Chester says, that is a duty laid on the company so long as it exists and is not liquidated, but it is not a statement that it should actually operate what in the loose non-legal sense I call the Port of Liverpool, without meaning every single dinghy in every small dock. This is somewhat weaker than the existing provision.

I realise that the point is legally complicated as well as being of an essential nature from the point of view of the operation of the port, its employees and all the traders and shippers who use it. I am, therefore, happy with the right hon. Gentleman's assurance that this will be looked at, since he has the legal resources to do so, and will be dealt with in another place.

An obligation needs to be placed upon the company not to liquidate itself or cease to operate the port without the Government and without the House being consulted, possibly by an Order laid by the Minister. This would be a much better procedure than the company being allowed to cease to operate such a vital port.

Having heard the assurance of the right hon. Gentleman, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 12

PRIORITY BORROWINGS

Amendment made: No. 6, in page 11, line 21, after 'outstanding', insert:
'not being moneys borrowed by way of loans specified in column (I) of Part IV of Schedule 2 to this Act'.—[Mr. Temple.]

Clause 38

CONVERSION OF CAPITAL

Amendments made: No. 12, in page 21, line 22, leave out 'mortgage' and insert 'harbour'.

No. 13, in page 22, line 11, leave out 'mortgage' and insert 'harbour'.

No. 14, in line 22, leave out 'mortgage' and insert 'harbour'.

No. 15, in line 30, leave out 'mortgage' and insert 'harbour'.

No. 16, in page 23, line 3, leave out 'mortgage' and insert 'harbour'.

No. 17, in line 6, leave out 'mortgage' and insert 'harbour'.

No. 18, in line 15, leave out 'mortgage' and insert 'harbour'.—[Mr. Temple.]

Clause 41

APPLICATION OF FOREGOING PROVISIONS TO EXISTING MORTGAGE LOANS

Amendments made: No. 19, in page 24, line 2, leave out 'mortgage' and insert 'harbour.'

Unsecured Loans







£163,042 9⅞ per cent. 1990
…
…
9⅞ per cent. Redeemable Debenture Stock 1990
1st April and 1st October
1st April 1990


£14,865 9⅞ per cent. 1995
…
…
9⅞ per cent. Redeemable Debenture Stock 1995
1st April and 1st October
1st April 1995

No. 20, in line 2, leave out
'mortgagee entitled to an existing mortgage loan'

and insert:
'lender of an existing harbour loan —[Mr. Temple.]

Clause 42

NEW SECURITIES TO BE HELD ON SAME TRUSTS AS EXISTING SECURITIES

Amendment made: No. 21, in page 24, line 9, leave out 'mortgage' and insert 'harbour'.—[Mr. Temple.]

Clause 47

DRAFT SCHEME

Amendments made: No. 23, in page 27, line 36, at end insert:
'and shall take into account any part redemption of the new securities under section 46A (Part redemption during the moratorium period) of this Act'.

No. 24, in page 28, line 9, at end insert:
'and takes into account any part redemption of the new securities under the said section 46A'.—[Mr. Temple.]

Clause 54

NO STAMP DUTY ON SUBSTITUTED SECURITIES

Amendment made: No. 25, in page 30, line 28, leave out 'mortgage' and insert 'harbour'.—[Mr. Temple.]

Schedule 2

PART IV

CONVERSION OF LOANS MADE UNDER SECTION 11 HARBOURS ACT 1964

Amendments made: No. 26, in page 40, column 1, line 2, at end insert 'Secured loans'.

No. 27, in page 40, at end, insert:

£602,483 9⅞ per cent. 2010
…
…
9⅞ per cent. Redeemable Debenture Stock 2010
1st April and 1st October
1st April 2010


£428,596 10 per cent. 2010
…
…
10 per cent. Redeemable Debenture Stock 2010
1st April and 1st October
1st April 1995

Bill to be read the Third time.

OFFICER CADETS (EDUCATION AND TRAINING)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Speed.]

11.43 p.m.

Mr. John Wilkinson: I am pleased to be able to raise the subject of the education and training of Service officer cadets, as it has received so little attention in the defence debates in this Parliament.
Apart from a brief explanation in the Navy debate by the Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Royal Navy on 4th May, 1971, of the changes in the Navy's pattern of educating and training officer cadets, which were previously announced in a Written Answer on 3rd March, 1971, and a short reference to the Royal Air Force's graduate entry scheme by the Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Royal Air Force on 19th April, 1971, there has been no mention of this important subject.
I have on two occasions made suggestions for the rationalisation of education and training procedures for service officer cadets. The occasions were 2nd March, 1971, at the conclusion of the defence debate, and 8th June, in the debate on the Armed Forces, to which my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Army, whom I am glad to see here tonight, replied. He was unable then to make any comments on the proposals I put forward. I hope he is now able to describe more fully the Government's policies and give perhaps some passing reactions to my suggestions.
The nearest we have come to a synopsis of the Government's view of this subject came in a debate on the defence budget which formed part of a Consolidated Fund debate on 25th March. In a slightly different but nevertheless

relevant context, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Royal Air Force described the aim as "to limit the defence resources devoted to training, and, indeed, the other overhead activities, to the minimum consistent with the markedly higher standards which we must maintain".
In a defence environment limited by the strict financial target of approximately £2,300 million in defence spending over the next quinquennium, where manpower costs are some 54 per cent. of the whole, and when the sociological restraints on recruiting combine with the exigencies of the rank and the engagement structure necessary to meet force levels and guarantee of the career prospects necessary for long-service officers, the training which these long-service regulars receive is of paramount importance.
Although the precise requirements are different for the three Services, their officer recruits are taken very broadly from the same age bracket and approximately similar levels of academic attainment. The quality of service training is in many ways unsurpassed. Industry is already appreciative of the merits of the industry-linked short-service scheme for officers, and the airlines find that service-trained aircrew posses a breadth of high performance and command experience which no civilian training can match. The Service academies provide a unique opportunity for leadership and character training. As the Donaldson Report remarked:
the Armed Forces have far a long time been the unacknowledged pioneers in industrial training and further education and it is high-time that due acknowledgement was made. In the 1970s civilian further education will doubtless continue to expand but it would be a great pity if the Service units were to lose their unique place in our total provision.
This is certainly acknowledged by the Royal Family. It is a great honour and not insignificant that His Royal Highness


Flight Lieutenant the Prince of Wales should be following in the footsteps of his grandfather and serving at Cranwell. This is a unique tribute to the quality of training at the Royal Air Force College, which has, sad to say, received no mention so far in our debates, and it is in no way diminished by his intention to progress to Dartmouth at the conclusion of his flying course.
The worth of a Service career is generally less apparent to the public now than it was in years gone by. Postings to stations outside Europe will increasingly be reduced; at the same time, more overseas attachments and rotational training visits will put a strain on family life. I am not sure that financial inducements will offset all this. Although the concept of the military salary does implicitly attempt to match Service pay to the rate for the comparable job in industry, the Prices and Incomes Board, in its third report, observed that although an increase in pay should be an important factor in making a Service career more attractive,
there was no certainty that higher rates of pay would attract all the recruits needed.
I know that recruiting figures are encouraging now. But I have reservations about long-term future recruiting, especially of officer cadets.
Perhaps I might quote the Donaldson Report once more slightly out of context, since it refers to boy entrants. It says
The idea of joining up merely as a way of earning a living should not be allowed to swamp the concept of adopting the profession of arms with the chance to serve one's country. The latter implies accepting an obligation to stay on the job through thick and thin and to put the country's interests before one's own, even and especially when it hurts.
This leads me to question whether, in the laudable and necessary desire to attract those who would normally in a post-Robbins era pursue their future education at university, the Services may not have taken the financial blandishment of the university cadetship scheme a little too far. No one denies that the Services should demand the highest possible level of academic attainment. But I am of the opinion, again to quote the Donaldson Report, that
We should present a communal life and an environment of challenge and stimulus entirely without counterpart in the civilian world as the main incentive to officer recruiting 

rather than the financial inducement of £1,059 at university. In other words, it is the Service life after graduation and the contact with Service life through the O.T.C.s, air squadrons and university naval units that is more important than the mere financial inducement offered.
At present, the Army and the Royal Navy are only partly dependent on the university cadetship scheme for their intake of long-service officer recruits. Both lay down a mix of pre-Service academy and post-Service academy university education alongside traditional cadet entry and training. That is not true of the Royal Air Force College at Cranwell, which has become a professional training unit for graduate entrants to the Service, who will become the main source of recruitment for long-service permanent career officers, to the tune of some 33 per cent. of the whole. In the old days it was only 15 per cent. of the Royal Air Force's permanent officers who came from the R.A.F. College. I find it admirable that there will be a higher level of academic attainment throughout the generality of the officer corps of the R.A.F. But it remains to be seen whether in years to come this will lead to heightened frustration in the middle ranks of the Service and whether they will have the instinctive reaction to discipline which is inevitable from the traditional system which took officer recruits at the more formative 18–21 age bracket.
I am extremely glad to say that the R.A.F. scheme appears to be going well, and perhaps my hon. Friend will have more to say about that later. However, one must observe that a course of this type must lead to a diminution of the breadth of the military training provided. In a year's basic training programme there will not be quite as much time for the variety of activities such as visits to the United States, to N.A.T.O. commands, to other Services, and so on, which are part of the broadening experience of an officer cadet in training.
To get back to the generality of the issue, I do not believe that the three present systems are the final solution. A number of our allies and friends have different systems which we would do well to study. I have in mind the Canadians, the Indians, the Dutch, the Belgians, and


the South Africans, who all have a system based on a joint-Service academy, where cadets of all three Services spend their formative years of training together. They are all involved in a process not only of military training but of higher academic education.
At present in the Navy and in the Army officer cadets spend a whole academic year in the course of their training. I contend that it would be better if officer cadets of all three Services could get that academic year out of the way at an early stage and could in the course of it complete their basic disciplinary training which is fundamentally common to all three Services. That would reduce overheads. It would mean a rationalisation of the teaching and instructional staffs of all three Services and should logically be done at a joint establishment.
The Howard English Committee recommended something not totally dissimilar. I should very much welcome the findings of that Committee now being made public. I know that the report was an internal one to the Department, but the Committee reported four years ago and I do not believe that there will now be any harm in making it public.
I am suggesting, in other words, that the post-sixth form year and an introduction to military life should take place jointly in fine surroundings in the public eye, preferably near London at Greenwich. When that stage is completed, the officer cadets could move on to their respective academies for their purely professional training: to Dartmouth or to Cranwell, or, if they are engineers, to the Royal Military College of Science at Shrivenham or the Royal Naval Engineering College at Manadon.
There would be no objection whatever to their doing university education later when they had proved that they could satisfactorily complete their professional training, because it is upon professional competence that their later Service careers will be judged. It is only if they prove that they can do the job that they should receive a university education at public expense.
It is an exceedingly costly business to provide university education for officer cadets. It is wholly admirable, as I have said, that as many as possible should

receive such education; but we must realise that in 1970, the last year for which I have figures, the Royal Navy spent £67,000 on the training of officer cadets in its officer cadet university cadet-ship scheme, the Army £75,000, and the Royal Air Force no less than £335,000. I would rather that money, or a proportion of it, were spent on those who prove that they can do the job.
I should like to quote a few parallels. The first is the South African Military Academy. That has two introductory phases lasting just under a year. In phase one prospective officers orientate themselves within the defence force. In other words, they acquire a joint background rather than an over-obsessional loyalty to one Service. They then do a further six months of phase-two training, which comprises the basic leadership requisites, code of behaviour, general knowledge about the Services, and so on. Thereafter they can pursue a Bachelor of Military Science degree for a further two years.
I suggest that our Services' officer cadets should spend that joint year together. If they had an arts background, for example, the course could be orientated much more to the sciences and technologies which they will need to master to become really competent in their professional training. If, conversely, their background is science, they could, before it is too late, acquire a degree of literacy and articulateness which will equip them well for the staff posts which will be important to them if they aspire to high command. I am also convinced that the professional academies themselves will benefit from being able to concentrate entirely on getting on with the job of training and not having, as in the case of the Royal Naval College and the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, to devote too much time to the academic training of their officer cadets, which should come separately.
I am basically satisfied with the present system, but I should like to know a good deal more about it. It is a great pity that we did not hear much more before. Already there are encouraging developments, like the naval idea of giving naval cadets the option of doing a professionally-orientated degree course after Dartmouth. But what I look to for the long-term future is some inspiring scheme


such as the joint college at Greenwich, which might well fit into the future planning of the Armed Services and provide a valuable stimulus to recruiting and a sound foundation for a military career.

12.1 a.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Army (Mr. Geoffrey Johnson Smith): The education and training of officer cadets and young officers are, of course, of considerable importance, and I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford West (Mr. Wilkinson) has mentioned them. I shall not be able to do justice to all his points in the short time remaining, but no doubt there will be an opportunity on another occasion. But this is an important subject—important to the Services themselves in meeting the need to attract young men to make their careers in the Services, important to parents and head masters who have the responsibility of guilding and advising their children and pupils and vitally important to the young men themselves who are contemplating their future.
Perhaps I might deal immediately with my hon. Friend's interesting suggestion of a "Royal Defence College" such as other countries have—in other words, a single system of training for all three Services. It is true that this matter was canvassed in the Howard English Report, but I cannot say that it can be made public, because it was prepared personally for the previous Secretary of State. However, it is well known that this was one of the recommendations.
But there are serious impediments to carrying out such a proposal. First, there is the cost. It would be very expensive. It would certainly run into many millions of pounds. This is a very important consideration when we consider on what a tight rein we keep our defence budget. Then there are the wishes of the young men themselves, whose desires very often are to attend a civilian university and obtain a qualification which is recognised in civilian life.
Third, there is the problem of reducing the cost and the options to manageable proportions—this is a very serious practical problem—yet at the same time meeting the professional requirements of all three Services. Fourth, having regard to the professional training requirements of the three Services, we must consider

how to organise the flow of students so that the least academically inclined spend about a year following another course of studies and yet treat the year as the first of a three-year degree course for those who are more academically motivated.
These difficulties have not so far been capable of satisfactory resolution, except by allowing and encouraging the more academically inclined to attend a civilian university and allowing the others—there is more to this process than attracting eggheads—such academic training as is considered essential.
I have not time to go into detail about the many changes which have taken place in the training of potential officers. But my experience and understanding of the three Services is that they do not dwell in the past but are willing to experiment—and a number of exciting things are going on.
We all know that in the 1967 Statement on the Defence Estimates the purpose of the previous Government was to continue to provide facilities at the three Service technological colleges. My hon. Friend mentioned some of the valuable work which goes on there. The second intention was to cease academic education at the single Service cadet colleges and to establish the new inter-Service college to be called the Royal Defence College. For the reasons I have given, this idea lapsed.
I now say something about work done at the technological colleges. Manadon and Shrivenham are continuing to provide degree courses in engineering and on completion of initial cadet training at Dartmouth or Sandhurst followed by a year of professional training at sea or with a unit, all officers attend college. In the case of the Royal Air Force the engineering department at Cranwell is ceasing to be a centre for graduate training. In future it will concentrate on professional and postgraduate engineering studies.
Quite apart from capital cost and problems attendant on training, attendance by air crew at the Royal Defence College would seriously disrupt continuity of flying training and would call for very expensive refresher flying training after completion of studies there.
Moving from the history of why it was not thought feasible for the time being


to go on with the Royal Defence College, the problem we have to work with, accept and try to overcome is that the three Services are suffering from shortage of candidates. This is not a problem unique to the Services; it is shared by all professions. The desire of young people to receive further education has meant that in the last decade or so there has been a significant increase, almost a revolutionary increase, not only in numbers who wish to go to university and other forms of higher education, but in the numbers who attain it. This is continuing.
There is the other group who do not go to university but who hold two or more A-level certificates. This number has also increased sharply. The significance of this from a defence point of view is that the best hopes of repairing current shortages of Service officers lies in offering the widest possible range of options and tapping all available sources of suitable recruits, including the traditional methods of entry. I know that my hon. Friend will welcome that.
I turn for a brief comment to the university cadetship scheme to which my hon. Friend referred. This scheme applies to all three Services. It is one whereby a young man accepted for a commission who has secured a place at a university attends his university and receives about £1,000 a year in pay while his tuition fees are paid by the Service. We do not look to attract people on the basis of money, but we emphasise that his having been commissioned means that the Service man is to hold a responsible position. It means living a life of challenge, both physically and mentally, a life, too, sometimes involving risk.
Students in the university cadetship scheme spend part of their vacation period with their parent Service, and sometimes a limited amount of training

is done in term time. We have had a most encouraging response to the scheme. My hon. Friend has had the detailed figures from my noble Friend, and so I will not go into them tonight; indeed, I do not have the time to do so. It is sufficient to emphasise that the response has been encouraging, and it still is. We certainly look to the scheme to provide the Services with many of the officers they wish to have.
Lest it be thought that the Royal Air Force is placing a disproportionate emphasis on its graduate requirements, I may say that the graduate entry scheme is intended for the foreseeable future to provide only some 30 per cent. of the total officer intake of the R.A.F. We hope to extend this. The Royal Navy thinks of this as a major source of entry. Recruiting officers for the Army is a matter of general concern, and Sandhurst, in particular, is seriously under strength. However, the entry through Mons is encouraging, and university entries are improving. Nevertheless, it cannot be said that the situation is satisfactory, and we are currently reviewing the situation.
This debate has concentrated on academic rather than professional training. I know that my hon. Friend is well aware that we attach enormous importance to professional training for men of all ranks. I hope that parents, headmasters and careers masters will continue to commend the Services to their children and pupils. Certainly since my appointment a few months ago I have been most impressed by the excellence of the men who have been trained and received a large part of their education from and through the Services.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at eleven minutes past Twelve o'clock.